**November 3, 2017**
This release includes a large number of long awaited features,
improvements and bug fixes, including streaming and graph support,
binary transfer of Bokeh data, fast Image/RGB regridding, first-class
statistics elements and a complete overhaul of the geometry elements.
Particular thanks to all users and contributors who have reported
issues and submitted pull requests.
Features:
- The kdim and vdim keyword arguments are now positional making the
declaration of elements less verbose (e.g. Scatter(data, 'x',
'y')) ([\1946](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1946))
- Added Graph, Nodes, and EdgePaths elements adding support for
plotting network graphs
([\1829](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1829))
- Added datashader based regrid operation for fast Image and RGB
regridding ([\1773](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1773))
- Added support for binary transport when plotting with Bokeh,
providing huge speedups for dynamic plots
([\1894](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1894),
[\1896](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1896))
- Added Pipe and Buffer streams for streaming data support
([\2011](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/2011))
- Add support for datetime axes on Image, RGB and when applying
datashading and regridding operations
([\2023](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/2023))
- Added Distribution and Bivariate as first class elements which can
be plotted with Matplotlib and Bokeh without depending on seaborn
([\1985](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1985))
- Completely overhauled support for plotting geometries with Path,
Contours and Polygons elements including support for coloring
individual segments and paths by value
([\1991](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1991))
Enhancements:
- Add support for adjoining all elements on Matplotlib plots
([\1033](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1033))
- Improved exception handling for data interfaces
([\2041](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/2041))
- Add groupby argument to histogram operation
([\1725](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1725))
- Add support for reverse sort on Dataset elements
([\1843](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1843))
- Added support for invert_x/yaxis on all elements
([\1872](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1872),
[\1919](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1919))
Fixes:
- Fixed a bug in Matplotlib causing the first frame in gif and mp4
getting stuck
([\1922](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1922))
- Fixed various issues with support for new nested categorical axes
in Bokeh ([\1933](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1933))
- A large range of other bug fixes too long to list here.
Changes affecting backwards compatibility:
- The contours operation no longer overlays the contours on top of
the supplied Image by default and returns a single
Contours/Polygons rather than an NdOverlay of them
([\1991](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1991))
- The values of the Distribution element should now be defined as a
key dimension
([\1985](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1985))
- The seaborn interface was removed in its entirety being replaced
by first class support for statistics elements such as
Distribution and Bivariate
([\1985](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1985))
- Since kdims and vdims can now be passed as positional arguments
the bounds argument on Image is no longer positional
([\1946](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1946)).
- The datashade and shade cmap was reverted back to blue due to issues
with the fire cmap against a white background.
([\2078](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/2078))
- Dropped all support for Bokeh versions older than 0.12.10
- histogram operation now returns Histogram elements with less
generic value dimension and customizable label
([\1836](https://github.com/pyviz/holoviews/pull/1836))