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I'm happy to announce the availability of the first beta release of the new MediaWiki 1.17 release series.

Please try it out and let us know what you think. Don't run it on any wikis that you really care about, unless you are both very brave and very confident in your MediaWiki administration skills.

MediaWiki 1.17 is a very 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 file for the full list of changes in this version.

********************************************************************* What's new? *********************************************************************

PHP 5.2.3 - ---------

We now require PHP version 5.2.3 or later. Why? Well, it brings with it some tools for your beloved developers. It was released on June 1, 2007, so we believe this requirement will not be a hassle for administrators. Be sure to check your PHP installation and contact your host if it runs an outdated PHP version.

New installer - -------------

MediaWiki 1.17 is shipping with a completely redesigned installer to fix a lot of outstanding bugs, clean up the code quality, and make it easier to use. Notably, you can now run upgrades from the web without having to move LocalSettings.php. A couple of other notable changes:

* The installer can now be fully localized like the rest of the software and contains numerous help dialogs.

* The installer script directory has been renamed from config/ to mw-config/.

* You now download your generated LocalSettings.php at install completion, rather than writing it straight to the configuration directory. The previous behavior was a security risk.

* IBM DB2 and MSSQL support were dropped from the installer.

ResourceLoader - --------------

As web browsers have become more capable, the software that MediaWiki runs on them has become more complex. This trend has resulted in developers needing an efficient way to package and deliver code to web browsers. To address this, MediaWiki 1.17 ships with ResourceLoader: a framework which combines and minifies CSS and JavaScript before delivering them to the web browser. ResourceLoader improves performance, while also making it easier to write client-side features. ResourceLoader allows developers to organize scripts, styles, and messages into named modules. Any number of modules can be loaded through a single request, improving page load times. Code is minified automatically and loaded when needed, reducing unnecessary downloads. Other advanced features include the ability embed images in style sheets using data URIs, or automatically flipping horizontal information in style sheets for right-to-left user interfaces.

Category sorting - ----------------

Category sorting has been drastically improved.

* Sorting is now case insensitive.

* Sub-categories, pages and files can now be paged separately.

* When several pages are given the same sort key, they sort by their names instead of randomly.

Language support - ----------------

As with every release, MediaWiki 1.17 brings improved support for languages in MediaWiki, with improved translation and features for the many supported languages.

New languages:

* Moroccan Spoken Arabic (ary) * Banjar (bjn) * Kabardian (Cyrillic) (kbd-cyrl) * Latgalian (ltg) * Minangkabau (min) * Dutch (informal) (nl-informal) * Rusyn (rue)

API - ---

API bug fixes and new features have been added to 1.17, providing more options for input and output.

* API output can now be formatted by PHP's var_export() (format type is dbg/dbgfm).

* An API module was added to list page properties.

* PARAM_REQUIRED can now be used on parameters, to have the API enforce existence before code even reaches the module.

* The API now has a Really Simple Discovery module, useful for publishing service information by the API.

The API contains 3 breaking changes against previous releases:

* action=patrol now requires POST.

* The patrol token is no longer the same as edit token.

* Session keys returned by ApiUpload are now strings instead of integers.

Other - -----

* Interwiki links in articles are now recorded in a separate table.

* Users can now add CSS and JS to all skins by using User:<name>/common.css and User:<name>/common.js.

Release notes - -------------

Complete release notes are at

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.17

********************************************************************** Download: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.17/mediawiki-1.17.0beta1.tar.gz

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