Posts Tagged ‘plugin’

WP-Table Reloaded 1.6: Cool new features

January 8th, 2010


Just a few weeks after WP-Table Reloaded 1.5, a new version is out. The automatic update for WP-Table Reloaded 1.6 should be available in your WordPress admin area shortly.

To start the New Year with a bang, there are a few great new features, that I know a lot of people have been waiting for:

  • Support for combining cells with “rowspan” and “colspan”
  • The WP Search will now also search and find search terms in tables.
  • Possibility to select the plugin language, independent from the rest of WordPress
  • Row Highlighting (change the background-color when hovering a row with the mouse)
  • Option to show an “Edit Table” link on the frontend for logged-in users
  • Select the position of table name and description (i.e. where it is printed)
  • huge internal plugin restructuring for easier development in the future
  • fixed a few smaller bugs (for IE users, in row hiding, and HTML validation)
  • Important: Support for the outdated WordPress 2.7 was dropped (so upgrade to WP 2.9 first!)

» Read more: WP-Table Reloaded 1.6: Cool new features

Extension 1: URL to Link Conversion

December 31st, 2009

Just recently I introduced WP-Table Reloaded Extensions, small code snippets that add further functions to the plugin by using the provided “Plugin Actions” and “Plugin Filters”.

The first such Extension that I’m going to present here, is an Automatic Converter for URLs to Links. » Read more: Extension 1: URL to Link Conversion

Beta test: WP-Table Reloaded 1.6

December 28th, 2009

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!

Introducing WP-Table Reloaded Extensions

December 28th, 2009

One of the main additions to version 1.5 of WP-Table Reloaded were so-called “Plugin Actions” and “Plugin Filters”. Both are part of the “Plugin Hooks”, a widely used concept within WordPress. This explanation from the WordPress Codex sums it up.

The way Plugin hooks work is that at various times while WordPress is running, WordPress checks to see if any Plugins have registered functions to run at that time, and if so, the functions are run. These functions modify the default behavior of WordPress.

Well known hooks are for example “wp_head” and “wp_footer”, which allow adding functions to the head and footer of a page that was generated by WordPress.

Actions and Filters can not only be used by the WordPress Core, but also by plugins and it is possible to add new ones. And this is what I did in WP-Table Reloaded 1.5. Many of these hooks were added to the plugin which now allow other plugins to add or change functions in WP-Table Reloaded.

These new functions may be as short as one line or as long as a complete new plugin. For WP-Table Reloaded, I will – over the course of the next weeks and months, but with no fixed time frame or frequency – present such pieces of code on this website, as a series of blog posts. As these code snippets are not complete WordPress plugins, I will call them WP-Table Reloaded Extensions, as that describes what they are a little bit better. » Read more: Introducing WP-Table Reloaded Extensions

Christmas Surprise for WP-Table Reloaded

December 24th, 2009

This post goes out to all supporters, translators, donors, friends, and users of WP-Table Reloaded.

I would like to thank you all for using the plugin and/or helping me to make it better. When publishing the plugin I had not envisioned how successful it would be by the end of the year. So, thanks to everybody for making this possible!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and your families! I hope that everybody can use these days for a little bit of recreation and happy times with your loved ones.

And I have a special Christmas Surprise for everybody: I’d like to announce that the next version of the plugin (1.6) will have two very, very nice new features that a lot of people have been asking for, but that I was (until now) unable to provide:
WP-Table Reloaded 1.6 will enable you to combine several cells of your tables to one larger one (in HTML terms: “rowspan” and “colspan”). This adds some great possibilities in designing tables.
I’m also happy to announce that starting with that version, the integrated WordPress Search will find search terms within tables, so that visitors of your websites can enjoy your content even more.

The code for this is already implemented, but I still need to do some testing. I’ll also have to fix a few small problems in the latest 1.5 release. If everything goes well (and to give the translators some time), 1.6 will probably be available in early January.

Thanks again for this great year of plugin development!

Sincerely,
Tobias