Not even two weeks have passed since the release of WP-Table Reloaded 1.5. During its development I was already working on several new features that were not yet stable enough to make it into the release, which is why I postponed them to 1.6. Now I believe they are ready for inclusion into the plugin, but as I already did with the previous versions, I’d like to announce a public beta test first.
[Update 2: Just published 1.6-RC1, please use the download below.]
[Update: Just released 1.6-beta2, see the download below.]
Among the new features and enhancements for 1.6 are:
- feature: Support for “rowspan” and “colspan” in tables
- feature: WP Search will now also search in tables
- feature: Possibility to select the plugin language
- feature: Highlight row (background-color change when hovering)
- feature: Option to show an “Edit Table” link on the frontend
- enhancement: select fields for position of name and description
- internal plugin restructuring
- dropped support for outdated WordPress 2.7
I already announced the largest two features in my Christmas Surprise blog post.
If you are willing to help and want to take part in the beta test, please download the developer version “1.6-RC1″. I plan to release the plugin in about a week (around the 6th of January).
Note that I dropped support of WordPress 2.7, so you will need WordPress 2.8 or higher to use the new release!
To install it, deactivate your current version, replace the folder “wp-table-reloaded” in your “plugins” folder with the one from the downloaded zip-file and activate the plugin again. Deactivation and Activation are VERY IMPORTANT!
BUT: Please note that this is a beta release. Although I’ve tested it on my site, I do NOT recommend using it on your production site, just yet. As always: Please make sure to have a backup of your files and your database before installing it. Thanks!
If you encounter any bugs, errors or problems, please leave them here as a comment. Feature requests are also welcome, of course.
I would also like all translators to update their translations. There’s .pot-file included in case you need it. After you are done, please email me the *.po and the *.mo file of your language. In any case: Please let me know, if you will be translating the new version or if you can not do it (for whatever reasons). Big thanks to all translators!
Thanks already to all beta-testers and translators! As always: Please don’t hesitate to comment or email me with any questions!
Hello Tobias,
Firstly, I would like to thank you for developing such an excellent plugin.
I worked some with the 1.6-beta1 and I think I found a few glitches. I sent longer descriptions with accompanying screenshots to your email address found on the Imprint page, but here’s the quick summary:
1. When using the new col- or rowspan feature, the Search/Filter box/functionality of DataTables JS library disappears from the table.
2. I did not manage to get the “rowspan” and “colspan” features to work properly, i.e. the rows and/or columns did not span as instructed in many cases.
Please refer to my email for more details. I also threw in a small feature request :)
Have a blast on New-Year’s Eve and keep up the good work!
Best regards,
Lembit
Hi Lembit,
thanks for your comment and the email!
I’ll answer your questions there and also post a summary here then.
Regards,
Tobias
Hi,
ok, here’s short summary.
1. This is a known limitation in DataTables, because it is hard for JS to deal with tables that have colspan or rowspan. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do at the moment.
2. Yes, that is a bug. But I found it and it will be fixed in a shortly available beta-2 :-)
Thanks!
Tobias
Tobias, thanks for your quick and professional reaction to my comments, I deeply appreciate this.
I’m looking forward to the beta-2 and of course to the final 1.6.
Best,
Lembit
Hi Lembit,
you are welcome! :-)
The beta-2 is now available (in the same post as before, I just updated the links). The final 1.6 is then scheduled for the week before January 8th, if everything goes well.
Best wishes,
Tobias
Hi Tobias,
I tested the col- and rowspan features of 1.6 beta-2 and both are working as expected now. I even applied some pretty absurd combinations of both to the same table and the plugin code applied those every time.
Best,
Lembit
Some thoughts towards development:
Have you thought about adding a component that would let a user present graphs from the tables created?
I muse about the idea here.
I found that there are at least 2 jQuery graphing “plugins”:
highcharts
visualize
(These tho seem to be better than jqplot).
There is also the SIMILE and TIMEPLOT JavaScript charts from MIT.
Wow, this was cool in the latest beta of plugin:
1. the admin option to allow users of different levels access.
2. the admin option to allow admins to determine which menu to use to access WP-Table Reloaded. – I wish this was a standard set of code for all plugins.
After 48 hours of use I can’t get my HTML table to import to my test site and load though….
Here is the URL (http://thejourneyler.org/rd/test-of-wp/ipa.html) of the table I am using as a test table. Will it load for you?
At first I got a message saying that the table could not be imported. But then I got a message that said “Are you sure you want to do this?” – but there was no option to click.
Using WP 2.9
Camino 2.0.1
OSX 10.6.2
Hi Hugh,
thanks for your comment and the suggestions!
Regarding graphs:
No, I have not thought about letting the user add graphs, and right now I’m not really convinced. I’l have a look at your links though! Maybe I’ll change my mind for future versions. Right now I think that this would be material for another plugin.
Cool that you like the new admin options! I believe that there is a plugin available that allows moving any plugin to a different menu, but I don’t remember the name unfortunately…
Regarding the import of your table:
The problem is that your table is not a valid HTML table. All closing HTML tags (like
</td>) are missing, so there is no chance for my plugin to import the table. (Therefore it raised the error that the table could not be imported. The second error message is a WordPress error message, but I’m not sure what caused it on your site.)Best wishes,
Tobias
Hello Tobias,
Firstly, I would like to thank you for developing this excellent plugin. I found it some weeks ago and I’ building a lot of pages in my website around it and I just finished converting my old HTML tables to the WP-Table Reloaded plugin.
It’s a dream come true, thank you so much!
Just installed the new version 1.6 in a offline site on my computer, that I use for tests, and so far, so good (well, almost).
I have 2 issues, that I had hoping the new version would resolve, but it stays with the same problem. I already read a lot in the forums, but could not find any solutions.
As you can see on this page (http://www.orcamentos.eu/tabelas-de-precos-online/materiais/) I put 2 issues of the same table.
The first using DataTables options enabled, and the second with the DataTables disabled. Two problems:
First: The search box is duplicated. It has to be the theme, because on some themes it works fine, in others don’t show, in some it’s duplicated.
Second: In this theme, with IE8 (with or without Compatibility View) the DataTables option is ignored. With Chrome, Opera or Firefox it works just fine.
OS: Vista
WP: 2.9
Thanks a lot for any solution!
Hi,
thanks for your comment and the nice words!
I had a look at your site and found something that is very likely causing the problems:
Your theme’s footer.php seems to contain two calls to “wp_footer();”. This leads to the issue that the DataTables call is applied twice to the table, therefore the two Search fields. There is also some HTML in the footer appearing twice (closing body and closing html tag).
I suggest to first fixing this and then we can see, if the second problem is still there.
Best wishes,
Tobias
Hi,
thank you for your quick response on New Years Day.
I corrected the code and its works perfectly for the first issue.
(I’m totally newbie in CSS or HTML, it’s my first site, 1.5 months old)
In the second issue, something strange happens. (installed version 1.6-beta2) and as you can see in IE (in the other browsers, it’s fine), on this page http://www.orcamentos.eu/fichas-rendimento/alvenarias/ it’s perfect, but in this http://www.orcamentos.eu/tabelas-de-precos-online/materiais/ the Search box is missing and the Table Options are the same for both. Even on my offline site, the situation is the same.
Thanks in advance!
Hi,
thanks! I found some problems in the CSV export file you emailed me. I fixed those and sent you a corrected file that should hopefully fix your issue :-)
Best wishes,
Tobias
Yes, everything is working.
I have no words to express my gratitude for your help!
Many, many thanks!
Hi,
I have been using version “1.6-beta2″ for 3 days, and so far everything is working fine. Combined pageviews are over 2500 and no one reported a single problem.
I don’t use colspan or rowspan at least for the moment, so I have not checked this part.
Kann man irgendwie auch die Hintergrundfarbe einer Zelle ändern?
Hallo,
ja, das geht. Guck dir mal bitte die Frage “How can I highlight certain cells or their content?” in den FAQ an.
Schöne Grüße
Tobias
Tobias,
If I open a page with a table on it, see:
http://www.boeken-over-boeken.nl/?page_id=1155
it always present ’10 entries’. Can I change that to ’50 entries’ or ’100 entries’ somewhere.
Best wishes for 2010,
Hans
Hi Hans,
this feature is called “Pagination” and is offered by the DataTables JavaScript library.
You have two options:
You can turn off Pagination completely by unchecking the corresponding checkbox in the “DataTables JavaScript features” on the “Edit table” screen for the table in question.
Or you can set the initial number of entries to show. For that, just past the code
into the “Custom Commands” textfield in that section.
Hope this helps!
Best wishes,
Tobias
Thank you Tobias.
It works perfect.
Awesome! When I get this done, I’ll definitely show you and see what you think, if it works out will definitely show my gratitude for your time!
Hi Abraham,
thanks, great to hear that! :-)
Regards,
Tobias
I have installed your latest 1.6-RC1.
I am pleased that the WP Search now searches through the tables, however, the search results are case sensitive. For example, I search for “Guitar”, I will get two results. One of which is in a table as “Guitar” and the other is “Guitar”. Another search of “guitar” will present only one result, not in a table, which is “Guitar”. Is there something that can be changed to allow non case-sensitive searches?
Thank you. Again, excellent plugin!
Hi Canon,
thanks for reporting this! Excellent find! I had not thought about case sensivity.
This should be an easy fix that I’ll add to the code, of course.
Your search will then find both “guitar” and “Guitar” :-)
Thanks again!
Best wishes,
Tobias
Thank you, Tobias. I found your change in the Google Code repository. I applied it and works it great!
Thank you,
Canon
Tobias:
Once again, super plugin. This is invaluable.
I have just discovered another search anomaly with which I hope can be as easily solved (if it is something that is of interest). Search results are possible from the table contents, but not the table name or description.
Thank you, Canon.
Hi Canon,
thanks! Good point again. You again found something that I didn’t think about :-)
I’ll add this in the next version.
Best wishes,
Tobias
Hi Tobias,
Thank you so much for your plugin! I use your plugin heavily to organize mp3 downloads tables. I was hoping to allow an additional plugin, “MP3 Scraper By Jordan Andree • Skorin”, to scan your tables and convert my linked mp3s into a little flash player button. This plugin can scan and convert mp3 links within WordPress and hard coded HTML tables. However, it is unable to convert my linked mp3 from WP-Table Reloaded tables. Can you point me in the right direction to get this to work?
Hi Jason,
thanks for your question.
This happens, because the “MP3 Scraper” calls it’s conversion process too early. It does not wait for Shortcodes to be evaluated, but tries to replace links to mp3s before that (but then the table HTML does not yet exist)…
To make this work, I suggest to modify line 10 of the mp3-scraper.php file to
so that the function runs after Shortcodes have been processed.
Best wishes,
Tobias
That did it. Thank you so much, Tobias! Now I need to figure out PHP syntax for the mp3 scraper to search “.mp3″ or “.MP3″. I know this is probably a simple tweak, but not so simple for me :/. Thanks again for your plugin and assistance.
Hi Jason,
great! Having the plugin search “.mp3″ or “.MP3″ can be achieved with another small change. In the same file, change line 34 to
(notice the added “i” near the end of the line). That tells the plugin to ignore whether the text is upper or lower case. So, it would even find “.mP3″.
Best wishes,
Tobias
Hi, great plugin, thanks! I have a question, is there any way to get them to keep adding rows (the last 10 for example) either change the color of the row or put him in another cell the new word .. but only in the last 10, therefore when you add a new row is another new stop saying.
Hi Martin,
thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, I don’t really understand what you want to achieve. Whom do you want to keep from adding rows? And what do you mean with “put him in another cell the new word”? Can you please explain this a little more, maybe with an example?
Thanks,
Tobias
I want to do is highlight the new rows added
otherwise, DataTables do not work .. sort or filter
Hi Martin,
no, unfortunately, that is not automatically possible. You will need to stlye the cells with “Custom CSS”, see the FAQ for examples.
Regarding the problem with the DataTables library: This could have several reasons, I suggest that you open a thread in the WordPress support forums, with more information.
Regards,
Tobias