Deneb 1.3 Beta-2 Available

Following the release of the 1.3 beta last week, we’ve had some feedback around experiencing issues with using Vega in existing cases. One of the discovered issues was very, very bad for the user experience (and the main Power BI window!), so I’m incredibly grateful to that user for letting me know about it.

These fixes have been made, and there’s now an updated version of 1.3 available through the beta channel for users to download. Here’s what to expect in terms of changes:

• Specifications containing mutable functions to the data structure or mark coordinates (such as tree-type transforms using Vega) were causing the equality checks to fail when rendering the visual. This would result in an infinite rendering loop.
• The inbuilt Vega templates were losing their autosize config.

For anyone picking-up this build for the first time, I’m including the important bits from the initial 1.3 post, such as what’s new and how to get the build for testing purposes underneath this short update. Anything you notice helps make Deneb a much better visual for other users once it’s been submitted and approved, so please don’t be shy in letting me know if something doesn’t look right to you or behaves how you expect against previous versions.

Thanks again to everyone who has tested and reported issues so far, and please do continue to let me know about anything else you find during this phase. All being well, I will be submitting if no further issues are discovered in the next week or so.

Cheers,

DM-P

What’s In 1.3?

The change log in the documentation site’s 1.3 staging area gives you much more information. How you can access that is coming up in a moment, but here’s a high-level list to whet your appetite:

• Debug Area added, which provides information about the dataset and signals.
• pbiColor expression for accessing individual theme colours.
• Ability to generate embedded base64 preview images for templates.
• Multiple visual cross-filter/highlight support.
• Vega updated to 5.22.1.
• UI rendering improvements.

How Can I Learn About the Changes?

The documentation site (deneb-viz.github.io) allows you to select your desired version, and you’ll be able to view the documentation for the current version in-progress by selecting it from the top-right, e.g.:

…or if you’d prefer, here’s a direct link to the /next version.

The recommended place to start is the Change Log, which summarises all changes currently in the beta, as well as providing links to the relevant documentation (within this version’s workspace) where you can learn more about it.

What Else Do I Need to Know?

Like the Alpha Channel Build, the Beta is not supported for production use, and is a means for early adopters to test and feed back on intended changes. I really value any and all feedback that you can offer, as it helps all users of Deneb to have a better development experience.

As I’m handling the development of Deneb myself, I’m also primarily responsible for a lot of the testing, and this means I can’t catch everything. I’ve tested and verified 1.3 functionality in a lot of my existing visual projects, but I’d strongly recommend that you try this with your awesome creations to ensure that everything works how you expect, and if not then we can do hopefully do something about that before we submit to AppSource.

If you spot any problems or something doesn’t work for you, please don’t assume that someone else has mentioned it already. Please raise anything in the GitHub repository and I’ll investigate as soon as I can.

More about this, and the process (including how to get and install, and what to do if you have issues) can be read on the Early Access Builds page on the updated website.

How to Download?

The download details are on the Early Access Builds page on the updated website.