Hello!
I'm very pleased to announce that we've updated the Wikipedia.org http://wikipedia.org/ portal page with a brand new search box that is more prominent and will now display meta data with images (as available) in the search results (link https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_searchbox_with_metadata.png).
This was a large effort by the Discovery Portal team to develop a JavaScript-only version of the language picker, so that JavaScript enabled browsers will see all the new meta data. Alongside that effort, we also ensured that in JavaScript (JS) disabled browsers (or older Internet Explorer versions), our visitors won't have a bad experience when choosing a language to search in. (Note 1: in older IE versions and JS disabled browsers, the type-ahead and meta data search results information will not be displayed.)
We also implemented a shorter language code (ie: EN for English, ES for Spanish, etc) to allow for more characters to be typed into the search box. When a user toggles the language selector, the full language name will be displayed in the dropdown for easy finding of the language you prefer to search in. For the more technical minded - I've also uploaded, to Commons, a screenshot https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sample_browsers_tested.png of one of the ways we test our code, visually.
We're interested in hearing your feedback or if you have any questions! (Note 2: My apologies for not getting this email out yesterday, but I had had issues with size limitations of my screenshots.)
On behalf of the very happy Wikipedia.org Portal Team,
Deb -- Deb Tankersley Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation