Rails spinoffs - Sep 2005 - Alternatives to Rico LiveGrid?

I''m no friend of paging, but I have to somehow deal with lists of 
potentially large numbers of objects. The Rico LiveGrid[*] at first 
blush seems attractive, but has some major drawbacks. It doesn''t work 
with Safari/Konqueror, not yet anyway. It can only handle fixed-size 
tables and requires that widths, including column widths, are 
hand-crafted.

I''m looking for a widget that ideally meets all of these requirements
- Data is loaded only when necessary.
- Can be fit into a fixed size block as well as into a resizable window.
- Automatic layout of columns.
- Has a fixed head row.

I don''t think anything like that exists. I''m not even sure it
is
possible, even less so in a cross-browser compatible way. 
Unfortunately, unless I cave in and resort to paging, I nevertheless 
need these features.

Are there JavaScript libraries that provide anything coming close to my 
requirements? Any suggestions and experiences on how to implement it?

Michael


[*] http://www.openrico.org/

-- 
Michael Schuerig                   The Fifth Rider of the Apocalypse
mailto:michael@schuerig.de         is a programmer.
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/

On 13/09/05, Michael Schuerig <michael@schuerig.de> wrote:
> - Automatic layout of columns.
The layout engine need to now the maximum widths of all the data in
all columns to calculate this. As it only has partial data, the
columns would jump when new data arrives, no?

Bye,
  Martin

On Tuesday 13 September 2005 19:31, Martin Bialasinski
wrote:
> On 13/09/05, Michael Schuerig <michael@schuerig.de> wrote:
> > - Automatic layout of columns.
>
> The layout engine need to now the maximum widths of all the data in
> all columns to calculate this. As it only has partial data, the
> columns would jump when new data arrives, no?
Probably. I can''t help it. As I''m generating the table from
metadata I
don''t know any better than the layout engine. Well, I could require the
metadata to include column widths, but that would hopelessly introduce 
presentation specifics where they don''t belong.

Michael

-- 
Michael Schuerig                             Those who call the shots
mailto:michael@schuerig.de              Are never in the line of fire
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/           --Ani DiFranco, Not So Soft

+1

Note that I really only need the first two requirements.

Some additional stuff I''d like to see is:
- Scrolling to a specific element (without the need to load  
intermediate elements)
- Dynamically add/remove elements
- Drag/Drop reordering support

I believe such an implementation is doable, with the exception
of not supporting Opera, because the onscroll event is simply not  
there[1]
(unconfirmed for latest version), and I think automatic layout of  
columns
is probably not possible (at least not cross-browser).

Additionally, I''d like to not only have lists or tables but floating  
elements, too.
So, what it IMHO should do is take a UL list and rely on CSS for  
layouting.
And don''t make any assumptions on the layout otherwise.

Thomas

[1] http://www.quirksmode.org/js/events_compinfo.html#interface

Am 13.09.2005 um 19:14 schrieb Michael Schuerig:
> I''m no friend of paging, but I have to somehow deal with lists of
> potentially large numbers of objects. The Rico LiveGrid[*] at first
> blush seems attractive, but has some major drawbacks. It doesn''t
work
> with Safari/Konqueror, not yet anyway. It can only handle fixed-size
> tables and requires that widths, including column widths, are
> hand-crafted.
>
> I''m looking for a widget that ideally meets all of these
requirements
> - Data is loaded only when necessary.
> - Can be fit into a fixed size block as well as into a resizable  
> window.
> - Automatic layout of columns.
> - Has a fixed head row.
>
> I don''t think anything like that exists. I''m not even
sure it is
> possible, even less so in a cross-browser compatible way.
> Unfortunately, unless I cave in and resort to paging, I nevertheless
> need these features.