Posts Tagged ‘feature’

Get it now: WP-Table Reloaded 1.5

December 19th, 2009

I just finished up WP-Table Reloaded 1.5. The automatic update should be available through your WordPress admin area shortly.

If you are updating from a previous version, please read the instructions below!

Here are some of the new features and changes:

  • added the DataTables JavaScript library with these features: sorting, pagination, filtering, TableTools (Copy to Clipboard, CSV/XLS export, Print) (also added these to the “List Tables” screen)
  • heavily redesigned the “Edit Table” screen: bulk operations for inserting, deleting, …, warning message if changes not yet saved
  • added features to the “Plugin Options”: set access requirements (user roles) to the plugin and the Options, Change position of the plugin in the admin menu
  • better loading/inclusion of CSS
  • export/import a dump file (with ALL tables/options/settings at once)
  • many, many plugin filters and actions for plugin customisation

You can read more about them in my post about the beta test and in the post on the development status.

Unfortunately I also had to drop a few translations, because they have not been updated in a while. But thanks to the translators for their work!
Most people shouldn’t care, but this might be important for some users: Version 1.5 does no longer support WordPress 2.6! You will need to run WordPress 2.7 or newer! And already an announcement: WP-Table Reloaded 1.6 will require WordPress 2.8 or newer! So I recommend updating to WordPress 2.9, which just came out, soon.

Special thanks go to Pavel aka Separatista for his tremendous support in finding many bugs and doing the Czech translation!

You can download the latest release 1.5 from the plugin’s page or from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Update Instructions

These instructions only apply if you update the plugin from a previous version.

  • Immediately after updating, check if your tables show up correctly. Then proceed with these steps:
  • If you are using Internet Explorer 7 as your web browser, please update to Internet Explorer 8 or switch to another browser like Firefox or Chrome. This will make your surfing experience faster and remove some problems that might occur with JavaScript. If you are using Internet Explorer 8, make sure to disable the “Compatibility Mode” for your WordPress website.
  • The new DataTables library will not automatically be enabled for you. You can enable it (which I recommend) in the “Plugin Options”. Make sure, all tables show up ok afterwards!
  • CSS loading was changed. Because of that the Custom CSS textarea in the “Plugin Options” now only needs your very own customisations as the Default CSS will be loaded from a file. So, if you have not changed the Custom CSS before and did not add anything, copy the contents of the Custom CSS textarea into a temporary file and remove all text from the textarea and save the options. Check if your tables show up correctly. If yes, you can delete the temporary file, if not, restore the contents. If you did add customisations, only those need to be left in the textarea, commands that were not added by you can be removed.
  • If everything is still ok, you’re good to go and enjoy the new features! :-)

If you like the plugin, I’d be very happy if you would rate it in the WordPress Plugin Directory. You might also consider a donation or have a look at my Amazon wishlist. This will encourage me to further develop the plugin and keep giving countless hours of support. Thank you!

If you experience any trouble, find bugs or have feature requests, please don’t hesitate to contact me via the means mentioned in the support section. Please make sure to carefully read the plugin’s page as well as the Documentation. There will also be a page with Frequently Asked Questions available shortly.

Have fun with the new features!

And by the way: I’ll have a special surprise for everybody on Christmas! :-)

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WP-Table Reloaded 1.5 beta test

December 5th, 2009

More than two months after the release of version 1.4, the development of WP-Table Reloaded 1.5 is almost finished.
Among the many new features and enhancements are (might not be complete):

  • added the DataTables JavaScript library with these features:
    • sorting, pagination, filtering, TableTools (Copy to Clipboard, CSV/XLS export, Print)
    • (also added these to the “List Tables” screen)
  • heavily redesigned the “Edit Table” screen
    • Bulk operations for inserting, deleting, …
    • Warning message if changes not yet saved
  • added features to the “Plugin Options”
    • set access requirements (user roles) to the plugin and the Options
    • Change position of the plugin in the admin menu
    • better loading/inclusion of CSS
  • many, many plugin filters and actions for plugin customisation
  • export/import a dump file (with ALL tables/options/settings at once)
  • fixed some minor bugs, errors and glitches
  • optimized and restructured big parts of the code
  • dropped support for outdated WordPress 2.6

There’s more about some of the new features in this development status announcement.

Because of the many new features and to give the translators enough time to translate the many new or changed strings, I again ask you to participate in a public beta test. The current plan is to release WP-Table Reloaded 1.5 before Christmas, but after the release of WordPress 2.9, which also currently is in beta and should be available in the next weeks.

So, if you are willing to help and want to take part in the beta test, please download the developer version “1.5-beta4″.

Note that I dropped support of WordPress 2.6, so you will need WordPress 2.7 or higher (tested up to WP 2.9-beta2) to use the new release! (I did this, because 2.6 is quite old now and required a lot of special attention, because some new functions are not available.)

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, but will most probably not be implemented in the 1.5-release, but later.

If you are a translator (or if you would like to translate the plugin into your language), please go ahead and do so. There’s .pot-file included in case you need it.
There are very many new strings, because I rephrased some sentences, so that they are (hopefully) easier to understand. But: Don’t panic! You’ll have at least ten days of time for the translation and most probably more!
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!

(By the way: I use the “Codestyling Localization” plugin to translate the plugin to German as it’s quite easy and more comfortable to use than editors like poEdit.)

Thanks already to all beta-testers and translators! As always: Please don’t hesitate to comment or email me with any questions!

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Status of WP-Table Reloaded development

November 4th, 2009

As the development of my WordPress plugin WP-Table Reloaded continues, I’d like to push out a small status update message to all fellow plugin users and contributors.

I’m working on version 1.5 of the plugin, and I have a few new additions and changes planned: Probably the biggest changes are the extended interfaces for table editing and the newly added “DataTables” script. It will also be possible to write extensions to my plugin and you can export and import all tables at once.
(This post got rather long, sorry about that :-) )
» Read more: Status of WP-Table Reloaded development

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Now available: WP-Table Reloaded 1.4

July 31st, 2009

Some (hopefully) nice new features and many, many enhancements are now available to everybody in WP-Table Reloaded 1.4. The automatic update should be available through your WordPress admin area shortly.

A few people already got a head-start and participated in the beta tests. They already got to see these new features:

  • restyled “List of Tables” to suit WP 2.7/2.8 layout, list now sortable
  • added Table and shortcode Preview in the backend
  • added possibility to show/hide rows/columns with checkboxes in the backend
  • “Insert Image” now allows insertion of images from/via the WP Media Library
  • textarea for cell data now grows when focussed
  • added “Custom Data Fields” to be able to store table meta data, accessible with a shortcode
  • added “Last edited” (time and user) information
  • fixed many minor bugs, errors and glitches (improved HTML validation)
  • optimized and restructured big parts of the code

Additionally, most of the translations were updated and Japanese and Italian were added as new available languages. Thanks to all the translators, who again did a terrific job!

This release should make working with tables even easier. The “List of tables” now has the same look and feel as the regular Post or Page Overview pages of WordPress. The make it much easier to get the needed shortcode for inserting a table somewhere. You can also preview the table to check if it shows the correct data. This is especially useful, if you’re using the “Hide row/column” feature. This will allow you to mark rows and columns as hidden. Those will then not be shown when the table is output somewhere!

Another big feature are “Custom Data Fields”. Some users where asking for a way to store meta data for a table (e.g. the source, licence, or the creator of some data). For this, you can now add a “Custom Data Field” and show it (in the same way as tables) almost anywhere on your frontend using a shortcode.

And you will notice the minor enhancements: The table cell will now grow in size, when focussed. The “List of Tables” is now sortable (with the included “Tablesorter” script, by the way). The performance of the plugin was again greatly improved. And one nice little thing: You will now be able to see, when the last change was made to a table (this also includes the last editor).

Most people shouldn’t care, but this might be important for some users: Version 1.4 does no longer support WordPress 2.5! You will need to run WordPress 2.6 or newer to use the latest version of the plugin! I decided to drop support for WP 2.5, because it is outdated by over three major releases and lacks many nice functions. This always required extra work and testing. I therefore encourage all users of WP 2.5 (if there are any) to upgrade to the latest WordPress 2.8.2.

You can download the latest release 1.4 from the plugin’s page or from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

If you like the plugin, I’d be very happy if you would rate it in the WordPress Plugin Directory. You also might consider a donation or have a look at my Amazon wishlist. This will encourage me to further develop the plugin and keep giving countless hours of support. Thank you!

If you experience any trouble, find bugs or have feature requests, please don’t hesitate to contact me via the means mentioned in the support section. Please make sure to carefully read the plugin’s page as well as the Documentation.

Have fun with the new release!

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Testing of WP-Table Reloaded 1.4-beta1

July 16th, 2009

Update: This post hast been superseded by the announcement of 1.4-beta2.

A new version of WP-Table Reloaded is in the making, which will contain a lot of changes and cool new features. This is a (probably incomplete) list of the new stuff:

  • restyled “List of Tables” to suit WP 2.7/2.8 layout, list now sortable
  • added Table and shortcode Preview in the backend
  • added possibility to show/hide rows/columns with checkboxes in the backend
  • textarea for cell data now grows when focussed
  • added “Custom Data Fields” to be able to store table meta data, accessible with a shortcode
  • added “Last edited” (time and user) information
  • fixed many minor bugs, errors and glitches (improved HTML validation)
  • optimized and restructured big parts of the code
  • dropped support for WordPress 2.5
  • added Italian and Japanese language files

Because of the large number of changes and to give the translators enough time to translate the (I hope not too many) new strings, I decided to start a public beta test of version 1.4. (My current plan is to release 1.4 at the end of the month, so that it can be a very stable release. This will also give me some time to update and extend the documentation.)

So, if you are willing to help me a little bit and want to take part in the beta test, please download the developer version “1.4-beta1″ developer version “1.4-beta2″.

Note that I dropped support of WordPress 2.5, so you will need WordPress 2.6 or higher to use the new release! (I did this, because 2.5 is quite old now and required a lot of special attention, because some new functions are not available.)

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 not that this is a beta release. Although I’ve tested it on my site, I do NOT recommend using it on your production site. 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, but will most probably not be implemented in the 1.4-release, but later.

If you are a translator (or if you would like to translate the plugin into your language), please go ahead and do so. There’s .pot-file included in case you need it. There are a few new strings to translate, but all in all it should not take too long.
By the way: I use the “Codestyling Localization” plugin to translate the plugin to German as it’s quite easy and more comfortable to use than editors like poEdit.
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! As always: Please don’t hesitate to comment or email me with any questions!

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