diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.1.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.1.txt
index 84db16e338d87..3a4781f1d022d 100755
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.1.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.1.txt
@@ -1,23 +1,56 @@
 .. _whatsnew_0171:
 
-v0.17.1 (November ??, 2015)
+v0.17.1 (November 21, 2015)
 ---------------------------
 
-This is a minor bug-fix release from 0.17.0 and includes a a large number of
+This is a minor bug-fix release from 0.17.0 and includes a large number of
 bug fixes along several new features, enhancements, and performance improvements.
 We recommend that all users upgrade to this version.
 
 Highlights include:
 
+- Support for Conditional HTML Formatting, see :ref:`here <whatsnew_0171.style>`
+- Releasing the GIL on the csv reader & other ops, see :ref:`here <whatsnew_0171.performance>`
+- Regression in ``DataFrame.drop_duplicates`` from 0.16.2, causing incorrect results on integer values (:issue:`11376`)
+
 .. contents:: What's new in v0.17.1
     :local:
     :backlinks: none
 
+New features
+~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+.. _whatsnew_0171.style:
+
+Conditional HTML Formatting
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+We've added *experimental* support for conditional HTML formatting:
+the visual styling of a DataFrame based on the data.
+The styling is accomplished with HTML and CSS.
+Acesses the styler class with :attr:`pandas.DataFrame.style`, attribute,
+an instance of :class:`~pandas.core.style.Styler` with your data attached.
+
+Here's a quick example:
+
+  .. ipython:: python
+
+    np.random.seed(123)
+    df = DataFrame(np.random.randn(10, 5), columns=list('abcde'))
+    html = df.style.background_gradient(cmap='viridis', low=.5)
+
+We can render the HTML to get the following table.
+
+.. raw:: html
+   :file: whatsnew_0171_html_table.html
+
+See the :ref:`example notebook <style>` for more.
+
 .. _whatsnew_0171.enhancements:
 
 Enhancements
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- ``DatetimeIndex`` now supports conversion to strings with astype(str) (:issue:`10442`)
+- ``DatetimeIndex`` now supports conversion to strings with ``astype(str)`` (:issue:`10442`)
 
 - Support for ``compression`` (gzip/bz2) in :meth:`pandas.DataFrame.to_csv` (:issue:`7615`)
 - Improve the error message in :func:`pandas.io.gbq.to_gbq` when a streaming insert fails (:issue:`11285`)
@@ -25,12 +58,48 @@ Enhancements
   objects for the ``filepath_or_buffer`` argument. (:issue:`11033`)
 - ``DataFrame`` now uses the fields of a ``namedtuple`` as columns, if columns are not supplied (:issue:`11181`)
 - Improve the error message displayed in :func:`pandas.io.gbq.to_gbq` when the DataFrame does not match the schema of the destination table (:issue:`11359`)
+- Added ``axvlines_kwds`` to parallel coordinates plot (:issue:`10709`)
+
+- Option to ``.info()`` and ``.memory_usage()`` to provide for deep introspection of memory consumption. Note that this can be expensive to compute and therefore is an optional parameter. (:issue:`11595`)
+
+  .. ipython:: python
+
+     df = DataFrame({'A' : ['foo']*1000})
+     df['B'] = df['A'].astype('category')
+
+     # shows the '+' as we have object dtypes
+     df.info()
+
+     # we have an accurate memory assessment (but can be expensive to compute this)
+     df.info(memory_usage='deep')
+
+- ``Index`` now has a ``fillna`` method (:issue:`10089`)
+
+  .. ipython:: python
+
+     pd.Index([1, np.nan, 3]).fillna(2)
+
+- Series of type ``"category"`` now make ``.str.<...>`` and ``.dt.<...>`` accessor methods / properties available, if the categories are of that type. (:issue:`10661`)
+
+  .. ipython:: python
+
+     s = pd.Series(list('aabb')).astype('category')
+     s
+     s.str.contains("a")
+
+     date = pd.Series(pd.date_range('1/1/2015', periods=5)).astype('category')
+     date
+     date.dt.day
+
+- ``pivot_table`` now has a ``margins_name`` argument so you can use something other than the default of 'All' (:issue:`3335`)
+- Implement export of ``datetime64[ns, tz]`` dtypes with a fixed HDF5 store (:issue:`11411`)
+- The ``DataFrame`` and ``Series`` functions ``.to_csv()``, ``.to_html()`` and ``.to_latex()`` can now handle paths beginning with tildes (e.g. ``~/Documents/``)
 
 .. _whatsnew_0171.api:
 
 API changes
 ~~~~~~~~~~~
-
+- raise ``NotImplementedError`` in ``Index.shift`` for non-supported index types (:issue:`8083`)
 - min and max reductions on ``datetime64`` and ``timedelta64`` dtyped series now
   result in ``NaT`` and not ``nan`` (:issue:`11245`).
 - Regression from 0.16.2 for output formatting of long floats/nan, restored in (:issue:`11302`)
@@ -38,7 +107,10 @@ API changes
   Legacy Python syntax (``set([x, y])``) (:issue:`11215`)
 - Indexing with a null key will raise a ``TypeError``, instead of a ``ValueError`` (:issue:`11356`)
 - ``Series.sort_index()`` now correctly handles the ``inplace`` option (:issue:`11402`)
-- ``DataFrame.itertuples()`` now returns ``namedtuple`` objects, when possible. (:issue:`11269`)
+- ``SparseArray.__iter__()`` now does not cause ``PendingDeprecationWarning`` in Python 3.5 (:issue:`11622`)
+
+- ``DataFrame.itertuples()`` now returns ``namedtuple`` objects, when possible. (:issue:`11269`, :issue:`11625`)
+- ``Series.ptp`` will now ignore missing values by default (:issue:`11163`)
 
 .. _whatsnew_0171.deprecations:
 
@@ -46,7 +118,7 @@ Deprecations
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
 - The ``pandas.io.ga`` module which implements ``google-analytics`` support is deprecated and will be removed in a future version (:issue:`11308`)
-- Deprecate the ``engine`` keyword from ``.to_csv()``, which will be removed in a future version (:issue:`11274`)
+- Deprecate the ``engine`` keyword in ``.to_csv()``, which will be removed in a future version (:issue:`11274`)
 
 
 .. _whatsnew_0171.performance:
@@ -56,64 +128,67 @@ Performance Improvements
 
 - Checking monotonic-ness before sorting on an index (:issue:`11080`)
 - ``Series.dropna`` performance improvement when its dtype can't contain ``NaN`` (:issue:`11159`)
-
-
 - Release the GIL on most datetime field operations (e.g. ``DatetimeIndex.year``, ``Series.dt.year``), normalization, and conversion to and from ``Period``, ``DatetimeIndex.to_period`` and ``PeriodIndex.to_timestamp`` (:issue:`11263`)
-
-
+- Release the GIL on some rolling algos (``rolling_median``, ``rolling_mean``, ``rolling_max``, ``rolling_min``, ``rolling_var``, ``rolling_kurt``, ``rolling_skew`` (:issue:`11450`)
+- Release the GIL when reading and parsing text files in ``read_csv``, ``read_table`` (:issue:`11272`)
+- Improved performance of ``rolling_median`` (:issue:`11450`)
 - Improved performance to ``to_excel`` (:issue:`11352`)
+- Performance bug in repr of ``Categorical`` categories, which was rendering the strings before chopping them for display (:issue:`11305`)
+- Performance improvement in ``Categorical.remove_unused_categories``, (:issue:`11643`).
+- Improved performance of ``Series`` constructor with no data and ``DatetimeIndex`` (:issue:`11433`)
+
+- Improved performance of ``shift``, ``cumprod``, and ``cumsum`` with groupby (:issue:`4095`)
 
 .. _whatsnew_0171.bug_fixes:
 
+
 Bug Fixes
 ~~~~~~~~~
 
-- Bug in ``.to_latex()`` output broken when the index has a name (:issue: `10660`)
+- Incorrectly distributed .c file in the build on ``PyPi`` when reading a csv of floats and passing ``na_values=<a scalar>`` would show an exception (:issue:`11374`)
+- Bug in ``.to_latex()`` output broken when the index has a name (:issue:`10660`)
 - Bug in ``HDFStore.append`` with strings whose encoded length exceded the max unencoded length (:issue:`11234`)
 - Bug in merging ``datetime64[ns, tz]`` dtypes (:issue:`11405`)
 - Bug in ``HDFStore.select`` when comparing with a numpy scalar in a where clause (:issue:`11283`)
-- Bug in using ``DataFrame.ix`` with a multi-index indexer(:issue:`11372`)
-
-
+- Bug in using ``DataFrame.ix`` with a multi-index indexer (:issue:`11372`)
+- Bug in ``date_range`` with ambigous endpoints (:issue:`11626`)
+- Prevent adding new attributes to the accessors ``.str``, ``.dt`` and ``.cat``. Retrieving such
+  a value was not possible, so error out on setting it. (:issue:`10673`)
 - Bug in tz-conversions with an ambiguous time and ``.dt`` accessors (:issue:`11295`)
+- Bug in output formatting when using an index of ambiguous times (:issue:`11619`)
 - Bug in comparisons of Series vs list-likes (:issue:`11339`)
-
-
 - Bug in ``DataFrame.replace`` with a ``datetime64[ns, tz]`` and a non-compat to_replace (:issue:`11326`, :issue:`11153`)
-
 - Bug in list-like indexing with a mixed-integer Index (:issue:`11320`)
-
 - Bug in ``pivot_table`` with ``margins=True`` when indexes are of ``Categorical`` dtype (:issue:`10993`)
 - Bug in ``DataFrame.plot`` cannot use hex strings colors (:issue:`10299`)
-
-- Bug in ``DataFrame.drop_duplicates`` (regression from 0.16.2) causing some non-duplicate rows containing integer values to be dropped (:issue:`11376`)
-
-
+- Regression in ``DataFrame.drop_duplicates`` from 0.16.2, causing incorrect results on integer values (:issue:`11376`)
 - Bug in ``pd.eval`` where unary ops in a list error (:issue:`11235`)
 - Bug in ``squeeze()`` with zero length arrays (:issue:`11230`, :issue:`8999`)
+- Bug in ``describe()`` dropping column names for hierarchical indexes (:issue:`11517`)
+- Bug in ``DataFrame.pct_change()`` not propagating ``axis`` keyword on ``.fillna`` method (:issue:`11150`)
 
 
 
 
 
 
-
-
-
-
-
-
+- Bug in ``to_sql`` using unicode column names giving UnicodeEncodeError with (:issue:`11431`).
+- Fix regression in setting of ``xticks`` in ``plot`` (:issue:`11529`).
+- Bug in ``holiday.dates`` where observance rules could not be applied to holiday and doc enhancement (:issue:`11477`, :issue:`11533`)
+- Fix plotting issues when having plain ``Axes`` instances instead of ``SubplotAxes`` (:issue:`11520`, :issue:`11556`).
 - Bug in ``DataFrame.to_latex()`` produces an extra rule when ``header=False`` (:issue:`7124`)
-
-
+- Bug in ``df.groupby(...).apply(func)`` when a func returns a ``Series`` containing a new datetimelike column (:issue:`11324`)
 - Bug in ``pandas.json`` when file to load is big (:issue:`11344`)
 - Bugs in ``to_excel`` with duplicate columns (:issue:`11007`, :issue:`10982`, :issue:`10970`)
-
-- Fixed a bug that prevented the construction of an empty series of dtype
-  ``datetime64[ns, tz]`` (:issue:`11245`).
-
+- Fixed a bug that prevented the construction of an empty series of dtype ``datetime64[ns, tz]`` (:issue:`11245`).
 - Bug in ``read_excel`` with multi-index containing integers (:issue:`11317`)
-
 - Bug in ``to_excel`` with openpyxl 2.2+ and merging (:issue:`11408`)
-
 - Bug in ``DataFrame.to_dict()`` produces a ``np.datetime64`` object instead of ``Timestamp`` when only datetime is present in data (:issue:`11327`)
+- Bug in ``DataFrame.corr()`` raises exception when computes Kendall correlation for DataFrames with boolean and not boolean columns (:issue:`11560`)
+- Bug in the link-time error caused by C ``inline`` functions on FreeBSD 10+ (with ``clang``) (:issue:`10510`)
+- Bug in ``DataFrame.to_csv`` in passing through arguments for formatting ``MultiIndexes``, including ``date_format`` (:issue:`7791`)
+- Bug in ``DataFrame.join()`` with ``how='right'`` producing a ``TypeError`` (:issue:`11519`)
+- Bug in ``Series.quantile`` with empty list results has ``Index`` with ``object`` dtype (:issue:`11588`)
+- Bug in ``pd.merge`` results in empty ``Int64Index`` rather than ``Index(dtype=object)`` when the merge result is empty (:issue:`11588`)
+- Bug in ``Categorical.remove_unused_categories`` when having ``NaN`` values (:issue:`11599`)
+- Bug in ``DataFrame.to_sparse()`` loses column names for MultiIndexes (:issue:`11600`)
diff --git a/pandas/core/frame.py b/pandas/core/frame.py
index b06f1b947bbe7..8617be1a244d7 100644
--- a/pandas/core/frame.py
+++ b/pandas/core/frame.py
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
 from pandas.tseries.period import PeriodIndex
 from pandas.tseries.index import DatetimeIndex
 from pandas.tseries.tdi import TimedeltaIndex
-
+from pandas.io.common import _expand_user
 
 import pandas.core.algorithms as algos
 import pandas.core.base as base
@@ -1302,7 +1302,7 @@ def to_csv(self, path_or_buf=None, sep=",", na_rep='', float_format=None,
             .. versionadded:: 0.16.0
 
         """
-
+        path_or_buf = _expand_user(path_or_buf)
         formatter = fmt.CSVFormatter(self, path_or_buf,
                                      line_terminator=line_terminator,
                                      sep=sep, encoding=encoding,
@@ -1505,6 +1505,7 @@ def to_html(self, buf=None, columns=None, col_space=None, colSpace=None,
                           FutureWarning, stacklevel=2)
             col_space = colSpace
 
+        buf = _expand_user(buf)
         formatter = fmt.DataFrameFormatter(self, buf=buf, columns=columns,
                                            col_space=col_space, na_rep=na_rep,
                                            formatters=formatters,
@@ -1554,6 +1555,7 @@ def to_latex(self, buf=None, columns=None, col_space=None, colSpace=None,
                           FutureWarning, stacklevel=2)
             col_space = colSpace
 
+        buf = _expand_user(buf)
         formatter = fmt.DataFrameFormatter(self, buf=buf, columns=columns,
                                            col_space=col_space, na_rep=na_rep,
                                            header=header, index=index,