Today we have released a new version of Handsontable Pro (1.17.0) and Community Edition (0.37.0). We have completely rewritten the merge cells plugin and fixed a lot of issues connected with it. This work will be continued in the next two releases as there are still some issues left.

We also fixed the most severe issues connected with non-contiguous selection. That’s a relatively new feature in Handsontable so it is under heavy development.

Last but not least, thanks to our awesome community on GitHub, we have been able to add two new language packs for Portuguese and Japanese.

Bear in mind that this version contains some changes which are backward-incompatible.

Breaking changes

• The Merge Cells plugin has been rewritten to ES6 and completely refactored. Before 0.37.0 (1.17.0 with Handsontable Pro) the plugin was accessible from the mergeCells property in the main instance. After the refactor, you can access it just like every other plugin, which is with hot.getPlugin(‘mergeCells’). (#4214, #4858, #4870)This update introduces new API (more information in the documentation) and four new hooks:
  • beforeMergeCells
  • afterMergeCells
  • beforeUnmergeCells
  • afterUnmergeCells
• The merged cells are now cleared (filled with nulls). The only value that remains, is the top-left corner cell’s value, which is the visible one. (#2958)

Changes:

• Fixed a problem with opening the context menu on non-contiguous selections. (#4816)
• Fixed a problem with removing rows using the non-contiguous selection feature. (#4815)
• Fixed a problem with the cell background color being overwritten by the selection. (#4812)
• Fixed an issue, where selection did not color the cells properly on IE. (#4806)
• Added the Japanese (ja-JP) language pack. (#4756)
• Added the Portuguese (for Brazil, pt-BR) language pack. (#4763)
• Fixed a bug, where pressing the ENTER key inside the editor of a merged cell sometimes threw an error. (#3949)
• Added the autofill functionality for merged cells (used to crash the table). (#4035)
• Fixed a problem, where merging already merged cells was broken. (#4138, #1722 )
• Fixed a bug, where the fill handle was gone after merging cells. (#4040)
• Fixed a problem, where there was no way to enter multiline content into a merged cell. (#2898)
• Fixed a bug, where the validation was broken for merged cells. (#3903, #3342 )
• It is now possible to select an entire column, going “through” a merged cell. (#4022)
• Fixed a problem, there was a possibility to delcare overlapping merged cells, which caused multiple issues. (#2590)
• Fixed multiple problems with keyboard selection of the merged cells. (#1635)
• Added the common.css file, necessary for tests added to Handsontable CE. (#40)

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