Datawrapper 1.8

We just released version 1.8 of our tool, and these are the changes:

• The chart editor got a redesign including a switch of the default font.
• In line charts you can now annotate time ranges in the chart.
• Also the line chart got a new “custom range” setting that replaces a the existing settings “Extend range to nice ticks” (now you can just pick your own axis range!) and “invert y-axis” (simply switch min and max in custom range) .
• We added a new default theme for Datawrapper Single users that has no “Created with Datawrapper”.

Under the hood

• We made Datawrapper ready for per-user plugin assignments, which is the basis for Datawrapper Single. Note that this change doesn’t affect self-hosted instances in any way: you can use Datawrapper as before.
• Simplified plugin development: no need for a complicated plugin class (plugin.php) anymore, instead you can now add a script init.php.
• There is a new automake mode (add “automake: true” to your config.yaml) for easier plugin development.
• We removed all traces of the old email-based theme restrictions. To restrict a theme to certain users or groups, use products and/or organizations.
• Allowed configuration of mail sender
• If a plugin gets installed, Datawrapper is trying to autoload the plugin dependencies if the plugin uses composer
• We refactored the Datawrapper core CSS using LESS.
• The following plugins were removed from core: export-image, pubish-s3, export-static-image.

Bugfixes

• Removed fancy toggle-panel footer in default theme. Simple links work, too.
• Line charts don’t loose their labels when viewed in less than 400px anymore.

Update notes

• We made changes to the database schema: Please execute scripts/migrate/1.8.0.sql after updating the code.
• Also we now use Composer for managing backend dependencies. Please run composer install updating.

Here you can find this release on Github.