OmegaWiki upgraded to MediaWiki 1.17

OmegaWiki has been successfully upgraded to the brand new MediaWiki 1.17.

Most of the changes are internal things (the database structure has changed, and several things had to be rewritten here and there to be compatible with the new version).

As a user, you might notice that everything still works like before :)

You will also experience the new interface (Vector) which is now default, like in the Wikipedias. The old interface (Monobook) can be activated in your preferences.

The upgrade also permitted to get the latest translations for the interface and to upgrade the extensions. Some of them where 1-2 years old.

Feedback on any bugs that you may find are more than welcome.

Automatic search suggestions

The automatic search suggestion, that has been available at Wikipedia for some time now, has just been enabled at OmegaWiki.

Now, when you type a text in the search box, it suggests results according to the words that are present in our database.

At the moment, the "Expression:" will unfortunately appear, as well as data from UMLS and Swissprot that we would need to filter out. In fact, the functionality should be rewritten specifically for OmegaWiki, with also the possibility to specify a language (a nice mix of php, java and sql... anybody interested in programming it?)

However, I think it is already useful as it is now.

You are all invited to try it out (no need to be logged in).

Note that if you don't like, you can disable it in your user preferences under "Search Options" => "Disable AJAX suggestions".