4 ms·

I think the author is missing the point. Some data just looks and acts beautifully in tabular / spreadsheet form, and if you have an app where that is the cas

by dogas 15y ago

I think the author is missing the point. Some data just looks and acts beautifully in tabular / spreadsheet form, and if you have an app where that is the case, then by all means, use a tabular layout. Does that mean you are just remaking a spreadsheet? Cmon. No. There is all sorts of added value for using a webapp that has a tabular data view. Maybe it's nicer to use. Maybe it comes with choices pre-filled out for you for certain columns. Maybe you provide user/team visibility, or sharing, or all sorts of other stuff that a simple spreadsheet could never provide standalone. The point is, don't shoot yourself in the foot because 37signals forgot to put a tabular view of their data in. That means nothing. You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app? Yes? Great, then provide a tabular view for your users.

robomc 15y ago
Yeah, this is a stubborn hipster design decision, which the post author is trying to propagate through hero worship.
_sh 15y ago
> You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app? I think the point of the article was that the author never thought this, but presupposed the answer was always 'yes'. It wasn't until looking at alternative implementations that this question popped up. I've done the same myself. I once implemented sortable live lists (lists that may be updated with added/removed items in the background, with only part of the list shown and the rest retrieved from the server). I wondered, 'how should this work?' and cast around for other examples. At first I used the (old) Google Reader model: two lists, one is 'All items', the other is 'New items'. But then I realised that, actually, sorting doesn't add anything, and indeed might confuse people who expect predictable order in their lists. Problem solved: don't allow sorting, instead provide a canonical order.

by dogas 15y ago

robomc 15y ago

Yeah, this is a stubborn hipster design decision, which the post author is trying to propagate through hero worship.

_sh 15y ago

> You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app? I think the point of the article was that the author never thought this, but presupposed the answer was always 'yes'. It wasn't until looking at alternative implementations that this question popped up. I've done the same myself. I once implemented sortable live lists (lists that may be updated with added/removed items in the background, with only part of the list shown and the rest retrieved from the server). I wondered, 'how should this work?' and cast around for other examples. At first I used the (old) Google Reader model: two lists, one is 'All items', the other is 'New items'. But then I realised that, actually, sorting doesn't add anything, and indeed might confuse people who expect predictable order in their lists. Problem solved: don't allow sorting, instead provide a canonical order.