The built-in WYSIWYG editor on MDN is designed to make it as easy as possible to create, edit, and improve articles and other pages almost anywhere on the site. The editor window, shown below, consists of eight key area. This guide provides information about each section so you know how to use our entire editing environment.
We're constantly working on improvements to MDN, so there will be times when this documentation or the screen shots below may be slightly out-of-date. We'll periodically update this documentation, though, to avoid it being unusably behind.
The editor UI contains the following sections, as shown above. Click a link below to read about that section of the editor.
After you've made your changes, it's strongly recommended you add a comment to your revision. This is displayed in the revision history for the page, as well as on the Revision Dashboard. It helps to explain or justify your changes to others that may review your work later. To add a revision comment, simply type the note into the revision comment box before clicking either of the Publish buttons at the top or bottom of the page.
There are a few reasons this is helpful:
The MDN community uses reviews to try to monitor and improve the quality of MDN's content. This works by setting a flag on an article indicating that a review is needed. You can learn more about technical reviews and editorial review in the How to guides.
To request a review on the article you've worked on, toggle on the checkbox next to the type of review that's needed. Technical reviews should be requested any time you make changes to the explanation of how something technical works, while editorial reviews are a good idea when you've made changes and would like someone to review your writing and style choices.
While selecting a review checkbox adds the article to the lists of those needing technical review or needing editorial review, it does not guarantee that anyone will immediately review the article. For technical reviews, it's a good idea to directly contact a subject-matter expert in the relevant technical area. For editorial reviews, you can post in the MDN discussion forum to request that someone review your changes.
Be sure to click one of the Publish buttons after making your selections, to commit your review request.