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Google Visualization API

Google Visualization API Release Notes

This page describes the Google Visualization API release process. It also includes the release notes for the current and previous versions of the Google Visualization API, as well as a highlight of what's new in visualizations.

What's New?

A new Release Candidate is available for testing. See the Release Candidate Details section for information.

  1. Release Candidate Details
  2. Bugs
  3. Feature Requests
  4. Official Releases
  5. Release Process

Release Candidate Details

Candidate release date: November 03

Anticipated production release date: November 10

New features and bug fixes:

  1. Annotated Timeline - Chart zero values now displays accurately.
  2. Area, Bar, Column, Line, Pie, and Scatter Charts - Internet Explorer 8 events and tooltips now handled properly.
  3. Table chart - Custom "Next" button text now displayed properly.
  4. Motion chart - Now supports animated line charts. New locales supported: "ru", "tr", "cs", and "hu".
  5. Geomap - Now supports metro area codes.
  6. Image Pie Chart - Now supports options to set the legend and labels.

Bugs

Visit our Known Issues page if you are encountering a possible bug in Google Visualizations. Before filing a bug, please check your code to be sure that it's really a bug (post questions to the mailing list for additional help), then search the known issues page to see whether it has already been filed, or resolved.

Feature Requests

You can file feature requests on our Known Issues page too!

Official Releases

This section describes the production releases of the of the Google Visualization API.

  1. September 29, 2009
  2. July 20, 2009
  3. May 26, 2009
  4. April 6, 2009
  5. February 23, 2009
  6. January 20, 2009
  7. December 9, 2008
  8. November 3, 2008

September 29, 2009

  • DataTable - New toJSON() method that returns JSON string that can be used in DataTable constructor.
  • Wire protocol - JSON response format now supports true JSON-valid date strings.
  • imagechart - New method getImageUrl() returns image URL used by Charts API.
  • Annotated Timeline:
    • Bug fix - Legends now support commas properly
    • You can now specify a null starting or ending date in setVisibleChartRange() to start from the beginning or ending range.
  • Area Chart, Bar Chart, Column Chart - Bug fix: legends now displayed in same order as series in stacked versions of these charts
  • Scatter chart - Bug fix: null values caused row index count to be off for succeeding rows in the data table.
  • Area, Bar, Column, Line, Pie, Scatter charts:
    • Calling setSelection() with both no parameters, null, or an empty array will deselect all selected items.
    • Added new options: tooltipWidth, tooltipHeight, tooltipFontSize to enable setting tooltip font size, width, and height respectively.
    • New options to change the axis (axes) to a logarithmic scale: logScale, logScaleX
  • Bar formatter - Now shows formatted value if present, rather than actual data value.
  • Grouping and joining now enabled on DataTable. Details with the production release.
  • Calculated columns now enabled on DataView. Details with the production release.
  • DataView - Added new getProperties() method.
  • Pie Chart - Fixed a bug with drawing some small slices in Internet Explorer.
  • Org Chart - Improved the look of the org chart.

 

July 20, 2009

  • Arrow Formatter - Small bug fix: Add missing cell border when Arrow Formatter is used
  • Motion chart - Add statechange event
  • DataTable - Bug fix: getDistinctValues() on an empty data table (used to throw an exception)
  • Annotated timeline chart
    • New appearance to the annotation list
    • Fix double escaping in labels (for example when Euro symbol was in number format)
    • Bug fix: Small changes in the range now fire range change event
    • Changing the zoom with arrows now fires range change event 
    • Fill color is the same as line color
    • Allow annotation columns even when displayAnnotations option is set to false (but columns are ignored)
    • Bug fix: Wrong timezones when selecting the visible range
    • Do not change mouse to hand when clicking a maximized chart
    • New option (now default) to highlight the nearest dot, not the last
    • New option to hide the bar date separator at the top right hand corner
    • New option to hide the dots at the top legend
    • New option to hide the values at the top legend
  • Image chart
    • Bug fix: some parameters were being dropped
    • Support for hidden columns
  • Org chart - Bug fix: Handle 'style' and 'selectedStyle' correctly.
  • Interactive Charts (all) - Fix a bug with selection, when there are null values in the middle of a series
  • ToolBar - Added an option "style" in the toolbar visualization, in the htmlcode component
  • Pattern format - Added an option to output the result into a custom property of cells in a given column
  • Table visualization - Changed paging symbols to use an image by default instead of unicode characters, and added a parameter to specify prev/next paging keyboard shortcuts for accessibility.

May 26, 2009

  • A complete data source implementation, including full support of the Visualization Query Language in an open-source Java library.
  • A new version (0.6) of the Google Visualization API wire protocol with the following features:
    • Additional query options with enhanced security.
    • Custom properties now supported in DataTables at the cell, row, column, and table level.
    • New output features:
      • Support for new output format (tab-separated values).
      • Ability to request a custom output file name for CSV or TSV files (see the outFileName parameter).
  • A new version (0.7) of the Google Visualization API query language with the following features:
    • Support for calculated columns.
    • Support for scalar functions.
  • A new Generic Image Chart visualization that wraps the functionality of the Google Chart API:
    • Exposes all the charts provided by the Chart API
    • Not restricted by the 2K data limit when using the Chart API directly using URLs.
  • Improved google.visualization.ColorFormat now supports all data types except boolean.
  • Legends have been temporarily disabled in image pie chart, image scatter chart, and image line chart. (Image scatter and image line charts are created using the Generic Image Chart, by setting options['cht'] to 's' (scatter chart) or 'lxy' (line chart)).
  • Organizational Chart
    • Added mouseover and mouseout events
    • Added support for custom style properties
  • Geomap - Google Maps <script> include no longer needed if you use the lat/long format with markers.
  • New options added to google.visualization.Query to support different data sending methods.
  • Area, Bar, Column, Line, Pie, and Scatter Charts support new options: titleFontSize, legendFontSize and AxisFontSize.
  • Fixed an image pie chart bug. Previously, if you passed multiple colors to your options object it create a gradient based only on the first color, ignoring all additional colors. Now it uses all colors as documented.
  • Fixed an annotated timeline labeling bug. Previously, labels were truncated to any % markers in the legend; this has been fixed to allow % characters.

April 6, 2009

  • New toolbar helper element that enables you to export your data in a variety of formats, or embed the visualization in another page.
  • Interactive charts (area, bar, column, line, pie, and scatter charts)
    • Added onmouseover and onmouseout events.
    • Added a showCategories option to hide the category labels. (Does not apply to pie chart).
    • Fixed an axis scale bug: If the min value was just above zero and the max value was large, the chart legend was expanded to below zero.
  • Table visualization
    • Table customization
      • Enable the user to supply css class names for: headerRow, tableRow, oddTableRow, selectedTableRow, hoverTableRow, headerCell, tableCell, rowNumberCell.
    • Fixed a bug in cell property 'className'.
    • Added ready event.
    • Basic right-to-left language support for table.
    • sort event, and a method getSortInfo, returns an array of indexes which is a mapping of the current sort.
  • Map
    • Added zoomLevel option.
  • Motion chart
    • Added ready event.
    • Fixed a bug to enable getState method.
  • Org chart
    • Added column for tooltips, implemented as a third optional column. If set, the value in the third column is the tool-tip that will be displayed when hovering over the node.
  • Formatters
    • Added a whitespace margin around the bar formatter.
    • Added an option to display a black line at the zero value of the bar formatter.
  • Annotated Time Line chart
    • New option to hide the range selector area.
    • Added number formatters to columns
    • Added date formatter to the date at the top right of the chart.
  • DataView
    • Improved performance of a DataView when used only for manipulating columns, and not rows.
    • Fixed a bug: When using a DataView only for manipulating columns, and adding rows to the table only after creating the view, these rows were not accessible through the view.
  • DataTable
    • Filter columns by value range. Each of the filters passed to getFilteredRows can be a range filter containing properties of minValue and maxValue

February 23, 2009

New Features

Here is a summary of the most interesting new features of the API.

  • Significant additions to the motion chart, including zoom, bars, and an option to save and restore the the state.
  • Added new options to the Interactive Pie Chart: pieJoinAngle and pieMinimalAngle, to control the behavior of the 'other' slice.
  • Added control over the min and max y values of the axis based Interactive Charts (Line Chart, Bar Chart, Area Chart,etc.).
  • Added 'ready' event support for all Interactive Charts.
  • Added collapse option for the Org Chart (allowCollapse).
  • Added new Date Formatter.
  • Made formatters available for all visualizations (not only Table).
  • Added methods to programatically hide and display specific data series on Annotated Time Line Chart.

Fixed Bugs

No major bug fixes.

Known Bugs

  • The dates in the top right corner of the annotated time line chart are corrupted in some locales (es, po).
  • After clicking on a legend of a line in line chart, the line width is set back to the default value, even if another value was specified.
  • Default bubble size in motion chart is different.
  • In the Bar Chart, the font can get too large. We should limit the maximum font size.

January 20, 2009

New Features

Here is a summary of the most interesting new features of the API. For the complete list, see Full Details below.

  • New generic ready event which is fired when a particular visualization is ready for methods to be called.
  • New options for the annotated time line chart:
    • fill configuration option to control the trasparency of the area below the lines.
    • thickness configuration option to control the thickness of the lines.
    • max configuration option to control the max value displayed in the Y-axis.
    • If date type time is used, limit the x-axis resolution to days.
    • ready event is fired when the chart is ready for methods to be called.
    • select event is fired when flags are clicked by the user.
  • New ready event implemented for Organizational Chart and Intensity Map. The event is fired when the charts are ready for methods to be called.
  • Added functions to set and get row properties on DataTable and DataView.
  • Added functions to set and get table properties on DataTable and DataView.

Fixed Bugs

  • The gauge visualization's setInterval() method was fixed and is now working well also with Internet Explorer.
  • The annotated time line chart failed to zoom-in to less than one day. This issue was fixed.
  • The bar chart labels were drawn in a reverse order.
  • Unselection of cells in interactive charts now close the tooltips.
  • Refresh was not working in some of the gadgets of interactive visualizations.

Known Bugs

  • The dates in the top right corner of the annotated time line chart are corrupted in some locales (es, po).
  • After clicking on a legend of a line in line chart, the line width is set back to the default value, even if another value was specified.

Full Details

In addition to the new features, we introduced the following changes in this release:

  • Improved latency issues in motion chart (especially on IE).
  • Table
    • No paging buttons when there is only one page.
    • Make sortable headers fixed width.
    • Small improvements in the look and feel.

December 9, 2008

New Features

Here is a summary of the most interesting new features of the API. For the complete list, see Full Details below.

  • Google Web Toolkit now has a library for creating and manipulating visualizations.
  • New options for the table visualization.
  • Motion charts now support multiple charts, more locales, and speed slider.
  • Annotated timeline now supports 10 locales.
  • New geomap visualization.

Fixed Bugs

  • Spreadsheet authentication errors have been fixed, and error messages clarified.

Known Bugs

Full Details

In addition to the new features, we introduced the following changes in this release:

  • New Google Web Toolkit (GWT) library with support for the following:
    • Using Google visualizations from GWT code,
    • Wrapping your own visualization in a GWT wrapper, and
    • Writing visualizations using GWT.
  • Table
    • New properties: firstRowNumber, startPage, width, height, alternatingRowStyle, scrollLeftStartPosition.
  • Motion chart
    • Now more than one table visualization can be hosted on a page.
    • 20 locales now supported.
  • Annotated timeline:
    • 20 locales now supported.

November 3, 2008

New Features

Here is a summary of the most interesting new features of the API. For the complete list, see Full Details below.

  • Released the format of version 0.5 of the GViz data source protocol. Now you can expose your own data source to visualizations!
  • Big reorganization of the documentation. We hope you like it.
  • Release of an open source Python library that helps data source providers wrap data in an appropriate object to respond to data requests.

Known Bugs

Full Details

In addition to the new features, we introduced the following changes in this release:

  • New get/setSelection() events added to Google's area, bar, column, line, pie, and table charts.

The Google Visualization API Release Process and Release Candidates

We release the Visualization API in two steps:

  • One week before we release a new official version of the Visualization API, we will release a preliminary version, called a Release Candidate (RC). This is to test for any breaking changes in the release. We will issue a notification to the Visualization API developer discussion group and monitor that group for reported issues, attempting to fix any backward compatibility problems reported.
  • One week after the RC release it will be released as the new, official release, if we are able to resolve all reported backward compatibility problems.

We encourage you to test your applications against each RC as soon as possible, and report any issues you have, to help us release a stable product.

While the Visualization API team thoroughly tests each new version, we realize that bugs may still exist in any new release. The objective of this two-step process is therefore to improve the reliability of the API for production systems.

Release Candidate Announcements

We will announce each new release candidate by emailing the Visualization API developer discussion group. If you're using the Visualization API for any serious applications, we highly recommend that you join this discussion group.

To help you find or filter these emails, each release announcement will have the same subject: "Release Candidate Pushed: <DATE>", where <DATE> is the push date. This email will include these usage instructions. New features will not be documented in detail, because the target of the release candidate is not to test the new features, but rather to test that the release does not break existing features. Detailed documentation of all the new features will be released with the production version.

How to Use the Release Candidate

The release candidate package version is "1.1", in contrast to the production version of "1.0" (or simply "1"). (Note that these numbers will not increase with future releases.)

You can load either the production or the release candidate (but not both at once), depending on your version number, as shown here:

// To load the production version, call this:
google.load('visualization', '1', {'packages':['piechart']});

OR

// To load the release candidate, call this:
google.load('visualization', '1.1', {'packages':['piechart']});

Reporting Bugs

If you discover any issues in the release candidate, you should send a message to the Visualization API developer discussion group with the details of the problem. The Visualization API team monitors this group during the release candidate period in order to be extra responsive during that time.