Show HN: Reactable – fast, flexible, and simple data tables in React

Re:Show HN: Reactable – fast, flexible, and simple data tabl... by hawleyal on Monday August 11, 2014 @08:54AM (#8163029)

Why are some developers so enamored with tables and making ever more table-generation libraries. They are one of the worst ways to display information in a readable way. Outside of spreadsheet computing and source data, they have limited use. Tables should almost certainly never make it to an end-user UI.

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Re:Show HN: Reactable – fast, flexible, and simple data tabl... by jrmiii on Monday August 11, 2014 @09:23AM (#8163127)

I disagree. Even if you come up with novel ways, or use common visualizations (e.g. charts) to display tabular data - I'd still give the end user a 'table button' that lets them simply view the data in a table.

Because of the ubiquity of the spreadsheet, most users simply grok tables and in a pinch, want to see the data that way. If they can't, the first feature request you're going to hear is for an Excel export so they can work around your application - not in it.

I'm not saying it's right, I understand you can deliver more information per second in a way that aids cognition - but until users are accustomed to this - we need tables.

That being said, if you work in React.js - why not have a nice table library for React.js?

edit: grammar

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Re:Show HN: Reactable – fast, flexible, and simple data tabl... by hawleyal on Monday August 11, 2014 @05:07PM (#8165304)

Most users do not grok tables. Most developers do because they are easy to automatically generate based on lists of things with common attributes.

Tabular data is a very exclusive set of information in which columns can be aggregated to sums, counts, et al.

Most tables on the web do not contain tabular data.

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Re:Show HN: Reactable – fast, flexible, and simple data tabl... by carterehsmith on Monday August 11, 2014 @10:10AM (#8163289)

I guess you never worked on a ‘business’ application (as opposed to ‘social’ app, or a ‘game’)?

For example, let’s look at the screenshots below from a typical line-of-business app (AWS console). How do you think the UI should look like, without using tables?

http://www.gregarnette.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ec2-re...

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Re:Show HN: Reactable – fast, flexible, and simple data tabl... by hawleyal on Monday August 11, 2014 @05:03PM (#8165284)

I work on many business applications. I find developers make tables as a first recourse because they are easy and don't require thoughtful design of the most usable way to view and interact with data.

Edit: Also the example you showed me is definitely not tabular data, as each column cannot be tabulated to a sum or other aggregate. It would most likely be much more semantic to make it a list.

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