IMPORTANT ! – Sqrl file format change

As part of our spreadsheet engine improvements, the format of .sqrl files has changed between versions 1.12 and 1.13.

This means that a .sqrl file saved from 1.13 cannot be opened in 1.12 or earlier versions.

Before you start using version 1.13 we recommend that you take a copy of your sqrl files in their current format in case you need to revert to them at some point in the future. And if you are collaborating with other people on your Squirrel projects, all collaborators should upgrade to 1.13 at the same time so that everyone can open each other’s files without issue.
 

Launching locally published projects by double clicking on the index.html file will no longer work

In previous versions of Squirrel, locally exported projects could be run directly by opening their index.html file from disk directly in a browser. From 1.13 onward locally exported projects will only run when accessed from a Web server.

Charts have been updated. We’ve made some big changes behind the scenes which means that charts now draw or refresh faster. Great news for projects that are heavy on charts and it has also allowed us to add a few much-requested features:

• Grouped bars (or clustering) – grouping series within a category to make charts easier to read
• Overlay chart
• Series re-ordering
• value axis bands
• log scale
• legend reflects the series style

The charts have been given a slightly fresher feel by adjusting some of the default settings too. of course you can always style them however you like.

We’ve added Smart Guides (red lines) to help you line things up. Guidelines appear which show you when an object or group is aligned to the centre, top, middle, bottom, left or right of another object. The object will snap to edges and centres too.

The selection box has been cleaned up a little to reduce clutter. When you select an object on the canvas just the corners of the object will have the resize handles but you can hover grab any part of the box (vertical or horizontal) to resize. When doing so a new size info box will appear to show you the dimensions making it easier to precisely size your components.

You might also notice that the components follow the cursor in full now when you drag them instead of only the outline box coming with you.

You can now set dynamic visibility on groups.

We have added support for multiple instances of the designer (windows only).

Known Issue – zoom level reset

If you work with the canvas at a zoom level other than 100% then, when you come back to design mode from debug, you will find that while the canvas remains zoomed but the selection box reverts to a zoom level of 100%. This means that when you select an item its selection rectangle will not be in the correct place.

This can be fixed by reselecting the zoom level (tip: press Ctrl+ then Ctrl- to increase and immediately decrease the zoom level)

The new ‘Quick Setup’ panel is a curated set of properties that help you configure, and style, your component quickly and easily. No more wading through sections and subsections to complete the basic setup. Don’t worry though, all the fine control over how a component looks and behaves is still there under the ‘All Properties’ tab

The quick setup properties also include help on each section, accent colours (pick a colour and we take care of the rest including text colour contrast) and text styles.

We’ve extended the list of fonts available by adding popular google fonts such as Roboto, Montserrat and Ubunto. And the colour picker has been updated to include a list of recently used colours, making it easier to style your projects.

When dealing with large numbers of components and groups, it could be hard to find the one you are looking for. We’ve added a search bar to make this easier.  While we were at it we flipped the order of the component list so it now works like other tools where objects at the top are the topmost layer. And a new right-click menu gives you access to perform common actions on one or more selected objects.

Our new single tooltip cleans up your charts so that you don’t need a separate tooltip for every series. And we’ve added vertical gridlines too, giving you more control over how you style your charts.

The new scenario component lets you define ranges in the spreadsheet that can be saved and restored by the end-user. Choose whether this should be saved locally (on the end-users machine) or in the cloud for all viewers of the published project to access.

Get access to help articles, tutorials and guides from within the Squirrel designer. Complete with a nifty search feature that lets you find the help you need.

The Mac version is now fully notarized (great news for all the mac users out there!) and we’ve made it possible to install on windows without needing admin privileges.

Our new single tooltip cleans up your charts so that you don’t need a separate tooltip for every series. And we’ve added vertical gridlines too, giving you more control over how you style your charts.

Deprecation of support for Internet Explorer
Squirrel 1.8 will be the last version that supports Internet Explorer (IE). From 1.9 the output from Squirrel will only be viewable in a modern browser such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge (chromium version) and Apple Safari.

This is in line with Microsoft’s own policy which dropped Teams support for IE late in 2020 and plans to drop IE support for 365 Apps (including Excel, Outlook and OneDrive) from 17th August 2021. You can read more about Microsofts plans to end support for apps and services here

Deprecation of experimental xlf migration utility
Some customers have tried out an experimental feature added to Squirrel for Migrating XLF’s. This migration wizard has been deprecated and will be unavailable from builds 1.9 and beyond.

We’ve added a bumper crop of new components to Squirrel to make building apps even easier:

• Date Picker
• Toggle Switch
• Progress Bar
• Icon
• Metric Tile

Ninox
Read data from and create, update records in this popular no-code database.

Zapier trigger
You can now use Squirrel to trigger workflows in Zapier meaning you can send data from Squirrel to over 3,700 other systems.

Scorecard
We’ve added a property to let you fix the height of rows in the body of the scorecard. You’ll find it under BODY ROW STYLING. Turning on the option to ‘Enable fixed row height’ allows you to enter the row height in pixels.
This is useful if you want to display more rows in a set table size or to ensure that the scorecard rows line up exactly up with other components consistently across browsers.

Image
Unsplash integration
The image component has a new option to search for and add images from Unsplash. No more trawling the internet to find a suitable image you can do it directly from within Squirrel.

Maintain aspect ratio
The aspect ratio of an image is now locked by default. You can override this by disabling this setting in the properties panel for the image.

Binding Tooltips
A tooltip now displays the full cell reference when the mouse hovers over a bound property.

New spreadsheet number format
It is now possible to select a number format that shows a comma as the thousand separator in the spreadsheet

We now carry forward the project name from the canvas properties meaning you don’t have to keep entering the name for your project each time you publish.

NB: for older projects, you will need to go and set the name in the canvas properties before publishing as it will override the name you specify in the project name field during the publish dialog.