WordPress Spreadsheet 0.5 released
WordPress Spreadsheet 0.5 is an incremental improvement from the initial release version. The major revisions in this version include adding an spreadsheet editing page and a spreadsheet options page to the WordPress admin menus. Additionally, autolocking rows and columns has been implemented and the interactive display now has limited power for anyone other than the WordPress administrator. Some minor GUI display glitches have been fixed as well.
First, there is now a wpSpreadsheet editing subpanel the Write menu in the admin pages to facilitate editing spreadsheets, which was clunky at best in the previous version. The display=interactive option now does not have the option of clearing the spreadsheet or loading/saving any spreadsheet id #, as that was granting too much power to any user. Instead, a user’s interactive display of a spreadsheet is restricted to saving and reloading that particular spreadsheet id #. However, the WordPress administrator still has access to the clearing the spreadsheet and the spreadsheet id # button when display=interactive .
Second, from an “options menu” administration page you can access wpSS-specific options, such as auto-locking rows and columns to protect formulas you do not want others to change (beats editing the PHP code!). The eventual idea here is to be able to create use wpSS to create enduser-fillable, savable forms where the enduser can’t muck up the spreadsheet’s formulas… a feature which most online spreadsheets strangely seem to lack.
As usual, you can download a zip file containing wpSS v0.5 from the WordPress SpreadSheet website.
Most of the code changes in 0.5 focused on the PHP/Javascript code base that interacts with WordPress. In the next version I am planning to focus on the Javascript user interface for the spreadsheet, specifically:
- providing a keystroke or menu option to lock or protect individual cells
- inserting and deleting rows and columns
- copying and pasting
- nicely formatted numbers, hopefully no more of this bazillion decimal point stuff
- in-place cell editing, not just in the formula bar
- selecting multiple cells
- maybe even some more (and standard) date functions, possibly even formatted
Note also that the syntax of the DATEFROM(year, month, day) function has been changed. Month now accepts numbers from 1 to 12 as you would expect, not the counter-intuitive Unix-ian 0 to 11 of wpSS v0.4. There are also some minor GUI improvements made to the Opera and IE6 spreadsheet display routines.
Screenshots:
