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As a webdev, that is actually the beauty of the web, you get to solve / create / build in all these ways. Neither are wrong. Another point I really like is tha

by prox 7y ago

As a webdev, that is actually the beauty of the web, you get to solve / create / build in all these ways. Neither are wrong. Another point I really like is that I can view a webpage from the 90’s and it will look fine (maybe not great) And there are frameworks, platforms and plugins which allow you to do what you described without little coding. You can go up and down on the stack, switch stacks and still get to the same end result.

simion314 7y ago
>you get to solve / create / build in all these ways. Most of the time your solution is broken. Some examples I hit recently from giant companies, the PayPal amount input keyboard handeling is broken (Del button was not working), Youtube search inpout with it's dropdown can get stuck open and you are forced to reload the page , when you re-invent the wheel you probably are skiping or gorgetting to implement everything so your custom popup might appear outside the screen, or it does not implement Tab ordering correctly or is not accessible, or is not navigable with arrow keys etc. Where in other GUI frameworks you use the built-in one and on top of that all those GUI framework will let you provide/override a custom Paint function if you want (on top of existing customization) so you are not limited either in any way.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> And there are frameworks, platforms and plugins which allow you to do what you described without little coding. Name three. I'm not joking. I'd love to know about a data table library that meets following requirements: - Doesn't commit me, the user, to one of the infinite combinations of ridiculous JS build chains. Instead, it should be accessible as a single-file JS dependency in transpiled form. It may use a ridiculous JS build chain for building itself, but I don't want to care about that. - Doesn't commit me to one of the few big JS SPA frameworks (which each comes with its own combination of ridiculous JS build chains). I want a table, not the kitchen sink, and definitely not the whole meat processing plant. - Doesn't commit me to particular styling. - Can handle thousands of rows on a single page. - Has the most basic ability to: sort each column, and sort by multiple columns. - Has the ability to do a per-column search across all data (that all matters if it paginates the data) - Doesn't interfere with browser search, and/or allows a full-table search on all data if paginated. - Has the ability to filter out ranges of values. Bonus points for extra type-specific affordances. - Bonus points for the ability to dump its contents into CSV (file or clipboard). Though this could presumably be handled with a small amount of code on my side. - Extra bonus points: has some minimal pivoting ability. I haven't found any meeting these requirements, where IMO these should be the default (and if browsers are ever going to standardize on some data table implementation, I'm going to petition for all of these to be included).
- prox 7y ago
  My first reaction (because you have a lot of stipulations) would be to use Drupal, which comes with views (a db query engine) in core. I am not up to date with details, but it should be able to get you very far. I did a booking system that did some impressive queries very fast, and allowed data export.
  - simion314 7y ago
    I think he mentioned that it must be 1 thing, no dependency, imagine he is already using soem other backend and now he has to switch to Drupal for a good Dratagrid and tomorrow when he needs a rich text editor he needs to switch to Wordpress and the new day when he needs a decent chart he has to use GWT. The ideal is that Web Technology would have built-in or if not community made building blocks. If made by community it must have no licensing issue, no dependency hell, no 100 alternatives for each widget. In my experience jQuery UI is the one that got close to this. You had only 1 dependency on jQuery, the community was not fragmented to have 100 alternatives for each thing and the included widgets are not incomplete.
    - prox 7y ago
      The backend should be your database, and Drupal is one of the more successful CMSes that takes care of the model/view. You can build views very easily with them and use that as your search engine or table (or both), you can hook it up with its api for more flexibility if you so wish. I don’t know in this exact use case, but there are probably building blocks (modules) for his to get very close. I’ll absolutely agree Jquery is an excellent library that I use to this day. It’s extremely elegant and indeed, it is a good example how it is suppose to be done.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Well, if I have a backend serving views, then sky is the limit :). But I really meant a self-contained, fully front-end piece of JS. One you could feed a data table and let the user play with it. A side issue I'm hinting at is that I believe the features I mentioned should be present by default in any kind of tabular display. Without them, the users are getting shafted - they're served data in front of them (be it item prices, virus stats, or a restaurant menu), but they have no way to explore it on their own. This is but a small piece in a great set of ways in which our industry ensures the users can't ever grow and become more proficient, and then complains that users are dumb. Can't have a bicycle for the mind if pedals and handlebar are not provided.

by prox 7y ago

simion314 7y ago

>you get to solve / create / build in all these ways. Most of the time your solution is broken. Some examples I hit recently from giant companies, the PayPal amount input keyboard handeling is broken (Del button was not working), Youtube search inpout with it's dropdown can get stuck open and you are forced to reload the page , when you re-invent the wheel you probably are skiping or gorgetting to implement everything so your custom popup might appear outside the screen, or it does not implement Tab ordering correctly or is not accessible, or is not navigable with arrow keys etc. Where in other GUI frameworks you use the built-in one and on top of that all those GUI framework will let you provide/override a custom Paint function if you want (on top of existing customization) so you are not limited either in any way.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> And there are frameworks, platforms and plugins which allow you to do what you described without little coding. Name three. I'm not joking. I'd love to know about a data table library that meets following requirements: - Doesn't commit me, the user, to one of the infinite combinations of ridiculous JS build chains. Instead, it should be accessible as a single-file JS dependency in transpiled form. It may use a ridiculous JS build chain for building itself, but I don't want to care about that. - Doesn't commit me to one of the few big JS SPA frameworks (which each comes with its own combination of ridiculous JS build chains). I want a table, not the kitchen sink, and definitely not the whole meat processing plant. - Doesn't commit me to particular styling. - Can handle thousands of rows on a single page. - Has the most basic ability to: sort each column, and sort by multiple columns. - Has the ability to do a per-column search across all data (that all matters if it paginates the data) - Doesn't interfere with browser search, and/or allows a full-table search on all data if paginated. - Has the ability to filter out ranges of values. Bonus points for extra type-specific affordances. - Bonus points for the ability to dump its contents into CSV (file or clipboard). Though this could presumably be handled with a small amount of code on my side. - Extra bonus points: has some minimal pivoting ability. I haven't found any meeting these requirements, where IMO these should be the default (and if browsers are ever going to standardize on some data table implementation, I'm going to petition for all of these to be included).

prox 7y ago
My first reaction (because you have a lot of stipulations) would be to use Drupal, which comes with views (a db query engine) in core. I am not up to date with details, but it should be able to get you very far. I did a booking system that did some impressive queries very fast, and allowed data export.
- simion314 7y ago
  I think he mentioned that it must be 1 thing, no dependency, imagine he is already using soem other backend and now he has to switch to Drupal for a good Dratagrid and tomorrow when he needs a rich text editor he needs to switch to Wordpress and the new day when he needs a decent chart he has to use GWT. The ideal is that Web Technology would have built-in or if not community made building blocks. If made by community it must have no licensing issue, no dependency hell, no 100 alternatives for each widget. In my experience jQuery UI is the one that got close to this. You had only 1 dependency on jQuery, the community was not fragmented to have 100 alternatives for each thing and the included widgets are not incomplete.
  - prox 7y ago
    The backend should be your database, and Drupal is one of the more successful CMSes that takes care of the model/view. You can build views very easily with them and use that as your search engine or table (or both), you can hook it up with its api for more flexibility if you so wish. I don’t know in this exact use case, but there are probably building blocks (modules) for his to get very close. I’ll absolutely agree Jquery is an excellent library that I use to this day. It’s extremely elegant and indeed, it is a good example how it is suppose to be done.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Well, if I have a backend serving views, then sky is the limit :). But I really meant a self-contained, fully front-end piece of JS. One you could feed a data table and let the user play with it. A side issue I'm hinting at is that I believe the features I mentioned should be present by default in any kind of tabular display. Without them, the users are getting shafted - they're served data in front of them (be it item prices, virus stats, or a restaurant menu), but they have no way to explore it on their own. This is but a small piece in a great set of ways in which our industry ensures the users can't ever grow and become more proficient, and then complains that users are dumb. Can't have a bicycle for the mind if pedals and handlebar are not provided.