2009/9/15 Lane, Ryan Ryan.Lane@ocean.navo.navy.mil:
Are these releases in any way connected to MediaWiki releases though?
I understand that all that gets release on Wikimedia projects, but it'll be great to have the rest of MW user base benefit from these as well (I have personal interest here as you can imagine ;)).
AFAIK the releases are not connected to MediaWiki releases, but instead are phases of the usability initiative.
That is correct. However, all of the features we code are in the UsabilityInitiative extension, which is available from SVN just like any other extension, so other MW users will benefit (and, in fact, they can already do so). It's not compatible with MW 1.15, however. The Vector skin is in MW core, and will be part of the 1.16 release.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)