I thought readers of this list might be interested in the "Wiki spam.
Stronger fightback." and "Case Study: Skinning Media Wiki" threads this
month on the mediawiki-l list:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2013-May/thread.html
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
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I'm happy to announce the availability of the first stable release
of the new MediaWiki 1.21 release series.
MediaWiki 1.21 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-1.21 file for the full list of changes
in this version.
Our thanks go to everyone who helped to improve MediaWiki by testing
the beta release and submitting bug reports.
== What's new? ==
MediaWiki 1.21 includes all changes released in the smaller, bi-weekly
"1.21wmfX" software deployments to Wikimedia sites.
=== Clearer email notifications ===
Bug 14901 ? Email notification mistakes log action for new page
creation, the third most reported open MediaWiki bug, has been
fixed. Consequently, notifications now state clearly what action was
performed on the watched pages in case they are created, deleted,
restored, moved or changed.
There are still some known issues. If you customised MediaWiki:Enotif
body on your wiki, you have to delete or update it; see also full
documentation.
=== Skin ===
The CologneBlue skin has been refactored to make it relevant again,
more compatible with existing scripts, and more similar in structure
to Vector and Monobook, reusing a lot of existing code.
The only major difference for end-users should be a slight reordering
of the sidebar menu (the "Context" submenu was removed and its
contents merged into other ones). If you were, however, depending on
the exact HTML it used to produce, you'll need to review your tools.
=== ContentHandler ===
As part of the Wikidata initiative, 1.21 adopts an extensible
framework ("ContentHandler") so that pages can contain something other
than wikitext.
Right now, built-in content types are limited to
wikitext - wikitext, as usual
javascript - user-provided JavaScript code
css - user-provided CSS code
text - plain text
Extension developers can create additional content
types. Extension:EventLogging uses ContentHandler to implement a
namespace for JSON schemas, and may be used as a reference. Other
extensions, such as Scribunto, also make use of the new functionality.
ContentHandler affects diff rendering, handing of CSS and JavaScript
pages, import/export, and the API.
=== Support for high DPI displays ===
MediaWiki now tries to deliver higher-res images to high pixel density
screens such as Apple Retina Displays (see gerrit change 24115 for
details). This is a work-in-progress, so normal-resolution images may
still appear in some places and in some browser
versions. Administrators may need to watch out for higher load on
their image scaling software.
=== Ajax patrolling ===
(bug 7851) The features users have waited for longest: one-click Ajax
patrolling. With this new feature, users can mark revisions or pages
as having been "patrolled" with a single click while staying on the
current page.
=== Internationalization ===
(bug 24156) The general logging framework was made completely
localisable at last. The logging for each action (whether in core or
extensions) might still need to be updated to use the new system,
though.
(bug 40367) MediaWiki:Contributions now reflects the gender of the
user.
=== New accounts ===
(bug 22457) It's now easier to create accounts for other users by
sending a temporary password via e-mail: Special:CreateAccount now
shows a checkbox for logged-in users to use this feature, rather than
a button.
Account API: bots and other scripts can now use the API to create user
accounts, rather than attempting to pseudo-submit the HTML form.
=== Account creation welcome ===
The MediaWiki:welcomecreation message was split up into
MediaWiki:welcomeuser and MediaWiki:welcomecreation-msg so users no
longer see "Login successful" when creating their accounts (bug
42215). If you customized the former message and want to preserve your
customization, you'll have to modify the new messages accordingly.
=== More wikitext now supported in JavaScript messages ===
The jqueryMsg parser now supports wikilinks and int: transclusion. For
more details, see Manual:Messages API.
=== Using semantic headings for the navigation menu ===
The previous scheme of using (varying per skin) <h4>, <h5> and/or <h6>
tags (with nothing apart from the main <h1> above them in the
hierarchy) was change to consistently using a <h2> above the entire
navigation and <h3>s as portlet headings in all skins.
The <h2> is hidden for normal browsers, but accessible for
screen-readers or text browsers.
While this change is minor, it might require similarly minor updates
in any customized CSS or JS (or in screen scrapers).
=== Extended collation support ===
UCA-based category collations for 68 languages based in Latin, Greek
and Cyrillic alphabets are now supported. You can use them by setting
$wgCategoryCollation = 'uca-<langcode>', where <langcode> is the
appropriate language code.
=== Bundled extensions ===
Newly bundled for 1.21 (bug 43815):
Cite
ImageMap
Interwiki
Title Blacklist
SpamBlacklist
Poem
InputBox
LocalisationUpdate
SyntaxHighlight GeSHi
Full release notes:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.21
**********************************************************************
Download:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.21/mediawiki-1.21.0.tar.gz
Patch to previous version (1.20.0), without interface text:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.21/mediawiki-1.21.0.patch.gz
Interface text changes:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.21/mediawiki-i18n-1.21.0.patch.gz
GPG signatures:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.21/mediawiki-core-1.21.0.tar.gz.s…http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.21/mediawiki-1.21.0.tar.gz.sighttp://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.21/mediawiki-1.21.0.patch.gz.sighttp://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.21/mediawiki-i18n-1.21.0.patch.gz…
Public keys:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/keys.html
- --
http://hexmode.com/
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity
is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.
-- G.K. Chesterson
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I have to delay the release of MediaWiki 1.21 again because of a
logistics problem.
I am used to hearing logistics in the context of shipping physical
objects -- in the American trucking industry, for example -- so I can't
help but feel a little strange saying "logistics". I had to go look up
the term and found this definition:
The detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many
people, facilities, or supplies.
That is about right.
I apologize for the confusion.
--
http://hexmode.com/
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity
is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.
-- G.K. Chesterson
Dear all,
this afternoon I was reading about the coming Flow extension. That's really great work. And I can't wait to work with it.
And there are so many other interesting projects: Visual Editor, Parsoid, Athena skin, Echo, Lua, Wiki Data and so on.
Despite of that MediaWiki you can see at Google Trends, that MediaWiki is still loosing attention. And in my opinion people just don't know, that MediaWiki is catching up. And they don't know, that it needs help.
But this is important for all of us, that developers see, that MediaWiki is no longer a software of the "zero" years.
So I suggest to publish more blog articles and social media posts about this new developments and if somebody has something nice to read, to discuss or to share gives a hint, so that the others can spread the news in their community.
Best regards,
Richard
Dr. Richard Heigl
Strategieberatung
Hallo Welt! - Medienwerkstatt GmbH
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