Hello everyone,

I am happy to announce the availability of the first stable release of the new MediaWiki 1.25 series.

MediaWiki 1.25 is a large release that contains many new features and bug fixes. This is a summary of the major changes of interest to users. You can consult the RELEASE-NOTES-1.25 file for the full list of changes in this version.

Our thanks to everyone who helped to improve MediaWiki by testing the release candidates and submitting bug reports.

== What's new for users? == MediaWiki 1.25 includes all changes released in the smaller 1.25wmf* software deployments to Wikimedia sites over six months, totaling approximately 2200 changes.

* Indicators – Templates that add icons to the top right corner of the page (and more) can be updated to use the new page status indicators feature.

* Enhanced recent changes – MediaWiki now uses by default the extended watchlist and so called enhanced recent changes (preference "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist"), which also received several improvements in MediaWiki 1.24 and 1.25 (task 37785). This means that Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist show all the changes to each page in a given day, sorted by page rather than chronologically. Changes to each page are collapsed by default and a compact overview is shown, with links to collated diffs and counts of each user's actions. Full activity for an individual page can then be shown with a single click. Users will no longer need to know in detail how a single change was chosen for display in order to figure out what else may have happened to the page that day, nor to scan a long list of non-contiguous lines on the screen in order to get a complete picture. The change is part of MediaWiki's evolution towards an interface which is more discoverable and less cluttered by default, while equally easy to quickly access in full, with the help of JavaScript. However, the (grouped) layout is an improvement for non-JavaScript users as well.

* Live preview – While editing, you're not sure what a wikitext syntax will produce? That's no longer a problem, now that live preview is no longer experimental. By enabling the feature in your preferences, MediaWiki will display the effect of your edits without fully reloading the page, so that you can quickly correct any mistake.

* Import – The import tool is now much easier to use on content from a wiki which has different namespaces than yours (e.g. because it's in another language).

* Internationalization – In logging and gender support, continuing the work in MediaWiki 1.18 and 1.19, multiple log types of Special:Log have been migrated to the new logging system, which allows full internationalization including word order and grammatical gender. The migration continues. See task T26620 for a list.

Locales – The following locales have been added: अवधी, بلوچی رخشانی and Koyraboro Senni.

* API documentation is localized and easier to access through Special:ApiHelp.

== What's new for system administrators? == * PHP 5.3.3 is now required (from 5.3.2) * Extensions and skins are now loaded through a new registration system * Profiling was completely overhauled to use the xhprof module.

Full release notes: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/MW/browse/REL1_25/RELEASE-NOTES-... https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.25

********************************************************************** Download: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.25/mediawiki-1.25.0.tar.gz http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.25/mediawiki-core-1.25.0.tar.gz

GPG signatures: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.25/mediawiki-core-1.25.0.tar.gz.si... http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.25/mediawiki-1.25.0.tar.gz.sig

Public keys: https://www.mediawiki.org/keys/keys.html

-Chad Horohoe, MW Release Manager