
Periodic Table of the HTML Elements - cdl
http://joshduck.com/periodic-table.html
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stared
Please, don't use periodic table to visualize anything by elements. For
elements it works great and is one of the most beautiful and useful
visualization ever created (as it's form is related to fundamental relation
between elements).

For everything else (unless having a similar structure to elements), it's
awful, misleading and pointless. If I see such I am always wondering, is it: a
tasteless designer, wannabe data scientist who know no other visualizations,
or a science ignorant having no clue why Mendeleev's table is structured in
that particular way, or a salesman wanting to give it extra legit and make it
sound more fundamental.

Just please, don't.

Hint: just group things, in their own structure.

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mden
It's just a way to visualize information. I find this interesting to look at
and also well organized (personally love the color coding and the asymmetry).

In either case, no reason to be negative. If you don't like it, don't use it.
If you are commenting to critique, no reason to be a jerk.

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paxswill
The periodic table isn't just a nice layout of information, the position of
each element in the table provides further information about it. For example,
we know gold (Au) is pretty a pretty good conductor of electricity. By looking
at the other elements in its group (the column), we can guess that copper (Cu)
and silver (Ag) are also good electrical conductors (in fact, some of the
best).

Beyond that simple case, there are loads of other bits of information encoded
in the position. The image on the Wikipedia article gives a good overview of
some of the trends.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#Periodic_trends](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#Periodic_trends)

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mden
I'm well aware that the periodic table has a lot of various information
encoded into it as I'm pretty sure anyone who's gone through high school is as
well. I am not sure why you think the tags table is trying to fool anyone...
it was chosen symbolically and it looks visually better than any other similar
attempt I've seen before.

Not everything needs to be pigeonholed into the "must make perfect sense"
category.

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phaedryx
Forget making perfect sense, what sense does this layout make at all?

I expect columns to have similar properties. Why are <span> and <script> in
the same column?

What property is increasing as I go left to right and top to bottom?

Why are some columns taller than others?

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jloughry
The author put some thought into arranging elements according to their
relationships, something too often overlooked in 'periodic table of $x$' mash-
ups.

The more I look, the more I find. I am impressed.

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cdl
Ditto, the arrangement and group colors make this a very navigable space.

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jneal
I've seen periodic tables like this in the past that were just, blah...But I
still reluctantly clicked through and was amazed. This is beautiful and
organized very well. I find myself clicking through various newer HTML5
elements I've never used.

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pessimizer
I can't figure out what relationships this is supposed to be showing me, other
than the color labeling a particular type of element according to the key on
the bottom.

Why is it 18 columns wide? Why the asymmetry? What does it mean for an element
to be on top of another?

I'm clicking around and I'm not seeing it.

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jloughry
It gives you something like a heat map of any web page. Cool! I keep finding
little surprises hidden here.

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mistercow
That's pretty cute. I was kind of hoping that singletons would be over on the
far right in the "noble gases" column, as an analogy to reactivity, or perhaps
some other analogy about nesting relationships.

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TheBiv
As a biology and genetics grad, I can safely say that I never memorized the
periodic table, but this looks like something I can commit to memory! Awesome,
awesome work!

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aroch
I memorized it (well, ~85% of it) in 6th grade for an extra credit quiz. As a
bonus, if we got all of it right, we got to be the ones to drop the matches
into our experimental gases (H2O2 to make Hydrogen, Helium from balloons,
etc). Needless to say, 6th grade me was more than willing to memorize things
for the chance to use fire.

I still have most of the table memorized, which has been useful through
various biology and OChem courses and my research

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tantalor
The arrangement could be improved in a few places,

1\. i and em, and b and strong, should be related. They should appear in two
column? e.g., i over em, b over strong

2\. The most common form elements (input, select, textarea, button) should be
near the top. select should be directly over option.

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dnautics
what's periodic about it? Isn't it just a table?

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phaedryx
I had the same question.

(Also, I realize that you're asking about the linked HTML periodic table, not
the periodic table of elements.)

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dnautics
Thanks =) I guess I should be a bit more careful with dangling pronoun
references.

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pattle
I get "Error establishing a database connection" in big letters when I try to
visit your blog

