MediaWiki 1.19

MediaWiki 1.19 is a 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. It was deployed to Wikimedia wikis in February 2012 and will have a release candidate and hopefully the final release out in April 2012.

What's new?
There are hundreds of bug fixes, new features, and changed features. The comprehensive list of what's new is in the release notes. Here's an overview:

Easier reading, editing, and maintenance

 * Disable the partial HTML and MathML rendering options for Math, and render as PNG by default (see RFC and )
 * MathML mode was so incomplete most people thought it simply didn't work.
 * Searching blocked usernames in block log is now clearer.
 * The default user signature now contains a talk link in addition to the user link.
 * Better timezone recognition in user preferences.

Internationalization

 * More gender support (for instance in user lists).
 * Added language: Canadian English.
 * Language converter improved, e.g. it now works depending on the page content language.
 * Time and number-formatting magic words also now depend on the page content language.
 * Bidirectional support further improved after 1.18.

Improvements for extensions developers

 * Extensions can now participate in the extraction of titles from URL paths.

Heads-up for MediaWiki administrators

 * Bumped MySQL version requirement to 5.0.2.
 * The command-line installer supports various RDBMSes better.
 * New skins/common/*.css files usable by skins instead of having to copy piles of generic styles from MonoBook or Vector's css.
 * BREAKING CHANGE: CSS styling for the  wikitable class is now more specific to prevent it from affecting nested tables, which caused various issues (bug 30485 and bug 33434). If your wiki has overridden CSS rules for ".wikitable", please revise them and adjust where necessary. For comparison, use the "table.wikitable" section in skins/common/shared.css as base.

And more!

 * The interwiki links table can now be accessed also when the interwiki cache is used (used in the API and the Interwiki extension).