WYSIWYG editor

• might be replaced by VisualEditor soon but was a major advantage of BlueSpice so far

• easy creation of tables
• easy upload of photos and files
• interface for insertion of magic words
• easy insertions of links within the wiki with a drop down menu of articles
• still need to use wikicode a little

Improved search

• advanced options
• filter (by namespace, etc.)
• suggestions as you type
• search file names

Advanced administration panel

• user management
• manage email, rights, passwords
• connects to LDAP, allows single signon

• extensions management for BlueSpice extensions
• list of extensions with status (stable, beta)
• automatic testing of extensions
• in the next release it will show you when a newer version of an extension exists and what kind of update it is (security, feature)
• in the future they hope to have a common repository for BlueSpice and other MediaWiki extensions with the ability to switch extensions on/off and update from the UI
• permission manager - assign permissions to users
• namespace manager -  no need to touch the config files
• add, edit properties
• merge namespaces
• delete namespaces and backup pages in them

PDF export

• you can organize your contents in a hierarchical navigation menu (like a book with chapters and articles) and you can export a chapter as pdf ( soon openoffice and Word doc as well )
• you export to predefined templates
• you get all linked attachments in the pdf as well
• excellent for creating up-to-date manuals and technical documentation with a click

Improved navigation

• status bar on top of article - last updated, by whom, responsible editor
• every user has a personal navigation bar depending on his preferences

Article feedback

• you can assign responsible editors for articles
• article review tool - you can ask certain people to review a draft article, define a review period, etc.

Statistics

• improved statistics with visualization, diagrams, etc.
• you can look at history of searchers with counts
• RSS feeds

Skins

• they offer a few skins but want to improve on that

SMW + BlueSpice?

• theere are several examples that use both and it works without conflicts
• there are some conflicts in terms of user experience (Semantic Forms vs BlueSpice editor) but no conflicts
• there is no integration between the two yet, even though there is potential for that

Release Cycle

• once or twice a year - releases - patch releases more often
• trying to follow MW release cycle since download rate went up 3 times as they released a version supporting newer MW versions recently