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Big news: 8 million downloads, TablePress 2.0, and more!

Many users are eagerly waiting for it. And with today’s great news of TablePress reaching 8 million downloads, it’s my great pleasure to announce that TablePress 2.0 is coming up soon. This major update will ship with some nice new features and useful enhancements.

8 million downloads

About a year after reaching 7 million downloads, TablePress crossed another milestone mark today. It has reached more than 8 million plugin downloads in the WordPress plugin directory. Thank you to all of you!

TablePress reached 8 million downloads from the WordPress plugin directory.
TablePress reached 8 million downloads from the WordPress plugin directory.

Testing TablePress 2.0

Great changes are ahead: The final release of TablePress 2.0 will happen this year, but to get there, I need your help: To make sure that the new features work for everybody and that the other changes don’t break anything, I’d like to get as much feedback on the new version as possible.

Besides a fresh and modern look of the TablePress screens, changes in the upcoming release of TablePress 2.0 include:

  • Completely new “Edit” screen for tables:
    • TablePress now has an even more spreadsheet-like user interface that makes working with large tables a breeze.
    • Editing will be much faster: A right-click context menu allows for quick access to the table manipulation tools.
    • A keyboard shortcut for saving changes will save a lot of scrolling.
  • Block editor support instead of having to deal with Shortcodes:
    • The new “TablePress table” block will give you a preview of the table when inserting it into a post or page, for a more intuitive embedding of tables. You won’t even have to remember the table ID, as a table search is included.
    • And if you want, converting existing Shortcodes is just two clicks away.
  • Easier styling of tables:
    • You can now use CSS variables for quicker and easier styling changes, in particular of table colors.
    • The CSS selectors in the default CSS have been simplified for higher compatibility with more themes.
  • Importing tables is easier and more powerful than ever:
    • Simply drag&drop files, even multiple files at once, even of different formats!
    • No more need to choose the import file format: The auto detection will know if it’s importing a CSV, Excel, HTML, or JSON file.
    • In addition, more file formats are recognized, like the LibreOffice ODS format.
    • The Excel import is much more powerful: For example, clickable links and simple styling will be recognized and imported!
    • The Replace/Append select box also has a live-search with autocomplete now, which makes finding the right table much faster.
  • New formula calculation engine:
    • TablePress now understands many more formulas, just as you know them from Excel.
    • The formulas even support text strings now, which enables many new ways of automatically creating table content.
  • Behind the scenes:
    • Cleaned up and simplified code, for easier future maintenance, to follow WordPress Coding Standards, and to offer helpful inline documentation.
    • Updated external libraries to benefit from enhancements and bug fixes.
    • Automated code compatibility checks and build tools simplify simple chores for easier development.
    • Support for PHP 8.1 and PHP 8.2.
    • TablePress 2.0 requires WordPress 5.8.

Thank you very much for your continued support!

TablePress will become more professional

TablePress has been one of my main hobbies for over 10 years now. (Counting in its predecessor WP-Table Reloaded, that’s actually more than 13 years!) I enjoy working on development and support just as on Day 1. It’s time for me to use this opportunity and turn this hobby into a profession. With TablePress 2.0, you will also have the option to obtain additional Premium features, which will greatly enhance your TablePress experience — and that of your site’s visitors. Not only will this allow me work on TablePress full time, but it will also mean that support and development will become even more reliable. Stay tuned for further details!