#MediaWiki release 1.18 is out

The new MediaWiki stable release has been announced and, the list of new features is impressive. When you have your own MediaWiki installation, you definitely want to consider upgrading.

There are several innovations that are quite relevant:

• jQuery is included as standard and, it is used
• several new languages have been added
• several extensions are now included as part of the distribution
• the qqx messages trigger a screen that helps identify specific messages

add &uselang=qqx at the end of the URL

An "in your face" message is often hard to identify. Adding &uselang=qqx to the URL will provide you with the information you need to identify the message at translatewiki.net for localisation or local modification. For the localisers this is a very significant tool.

Given that extensions are included in the new release, it will be a good idea to have three extensions included in the next release for Wikis that do not have English for its user interface. They are:

• LocalisationUpdate
• Narayam
• WebFonts

In this way a language will always be up to date with the latest localisations, it will be supported with input methods and fonts that make the Wiki accessible to as wide a group of people as we can make it. What would be really awesome is when new and improved keyboard methods and fonts can be distributed in a similar way as the messages...

Thanks,

      GerardM