MediaWiki 1.20/wmf1/overview

This is a future version of MediaWiki, which will eventually be deployed in April 2012, and released for other MediaWiki administrators to use sometime after that. Look at the Roadmap for updates and at the 1.20 roadmap and the software deployments calendar for the deployment schedule.

What's new?
Comprehensive list of what's new will be in the release notes.

Probably in 1.20:
 * Gadgets are always loaded through ResourceLoader, which means each module executes in a local (new) scope by default.
 * The upcoming ResourceLoader 2.0 includes a Top load queue (while most of the specifications aren't included in MW 1.19) . This will be first released as part of MediaWiki 1.19. From that release on, the  and   module are loaded from the top, and extensions can add their modules to the top by setting 'position' to 'top' in the array item of

New features in 1.20

 * Added TitleIsAlwaysKnown hook which gets called when determining if a page exists. **
 * upload_by_url right can be (globally) restricted to given domains **
 * &useskin=default will now always display the default skin. Useful for users with a preference for the non-default skin to look at something using the default skin.
 * The preference to display missing links as “link?” (instead of just redlinks) has been removed.
 * jQuery JSON plugin is now at v2.3.
 * CSS classes can be used to change the appearance of a verified email in user preferences.
 * Introduced $wgDebugDBTransactions to trace transaction status (currently PostgreSQL only). **
 * The parser itself is now given as an additional argument to ParserMakeImageParams. **
 * MediaWiki now uses cryptographically random numbers for increased security while generating tokens. (See MWCryptRand.)
 * Option on Special:Prefixindex and Special:Allpages to not show redirects.
 * Two new messages (sharedupload-desc-edit and sharedupload-desc-create) are now displayed when editing the local page for a shared file.
 * “Creating” is now given in the page title instead of “Editing” when you are creating a page.
 * The nosummary option is preserved even when a captcha is shown.
 * is now available in addition to since the text from  can change.
 * Special:Version has been updated now that we've switched Git. ( and )
 * "Show Changes" on default messages shows now diff against default message text.
 * This is useful, because the textbox is already preloaded with the default message text and than it is nice to get the diff against that text.
 * #speciale parser function, in addition to the already defined #special parser function, to give the localized, encoded special page name. Useful for use in the param ist of fullurl.
 * generateSitemap can now optionally skip redirect pages.
 * get rid of unneeded arguments passed to addOption
 * rename $redirects to $skippedRedirects. Easier to search.
 * easier to read conditional test of page_is_redirect
 * There is now an API (action=tokens) just for getting tokens.

Bug fixes in 1.20

 * Use the correct way to construct a log page title.
 * Regenerate an empty user_token and save to the database when we try to set the user's cookies for login.
 * New edit emails for watched pages always provide a link to the edit which triggered the mail.
 * Added user talk link on Special:Listusers.
 * section edit and TOC hide/show links are excluded from selection and copy/paste on supporting browsers.
 * Fixed incorrect hash mismatch errors in the DiffHistoryBlob history compression method.
 * Localised parentheses are now used in more special pages.
 * When editing a script page on a RTL wiki the textbox should be LTR.
 * Calling close on a DatabaseBase object now clears the connection.
 * Show deletion log extract on non-existent file pages if applicable.
 * Let ?preloadtitle=foo be passed on to target of Special:MyPage and Special:MyTalk.
 * Show the correct diff when a section edit is rejected by the spam filter.
 * Add a switch for SETting the search_path (Postgres).
 * Returning to the previous page after logging in loses any array-valued parameters in the query string.
 * Updated compressOld.php documentation to mention the different usages of -s and -n parameters depending on compression type.
 * Rendering of devanagari numbers in automatic '#' number lists

API changes in 1.20

 * Add ability to retrieve maximum upload size from MediaWiki API.
 * MediaWiki API intro message about "HTML format" should mention the format parameter.
 * Allow descending order for list=watchlistraw.
 * Limit of bkusers of list=blocks and titles of action=query is not documented in API help.
 * API now allows editing using pageid
 * API now allows changing of protection level using pageid
 * API now allows comparing pages using pageids

Languages updated in 1.20
MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Bugzilla reports.


 * Namespace gender aliases for Albanian languages (sq & aln) and Croatian (hr). ( and )
 * Mizo (lus) added.

Other changes in 1.20

 * The user_token field is now left empty until a user attempts to login and cookies need to be set. It is also now possible to reset every user's user_token simply by clearing the values in the user_token column.