

Show HN: Spreadsheets in the browser with Box, Dropbox support - brettcvz
http://dchang.mit.edu/boxes/

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Kilimanjaro
It suffers from the same defect all html spreadsheets do (even google docs):
if you zoom/resize the screen, row/col alignment breaks.

Unbelievable how in this decade it is still almost impossible to make a table
work like a spreadsheet in html. How hard would it be to just enforce a couple
of css properties in tables to make them behave? Like:

    
    
        tbody {overflow:auto;}
    

That would be a great start. Then:

    
    
        thead,tfoot{position:fixed;}
        tbody td:first-child{position:fixed}
    

That'd be all, add a contentEditable attribute and that's it. Everything else
is just a matter of coding tricks to format cells and formulas.

Hello Whatwg, you listening? I know w3c is been deaf for long, that's why I am
asking you. Hixie alive? Earth is calling.

* Here is a basic implementation using box model and display:-webkit-box; (chrome/safari in OSX only) <http://georgenava.appspot.com/demo/spreadsheetcalc.html>

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nickpresta
Your implementation breaks after 1 zoom increase. The OPs implement breaks
after 4.

Google Spreadsheet is the only implementation to get it right, as far as I can
tell.

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Kilimanjaro
All break, even google's and mine. Point is there should be ONE easy way using
just a single table and not a miriad of hacks with floating divs all over and
resize/repaint triggers everytime something moves.

That's exactly my complain.

* View-source: mine is just one table and nothing else, no hacks. Take a look at google's implementation and try to make sense of it. That's my point, just one table should be enough to make it work.

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rev087
I tried doing something along the lines, using a table, years ago (way before
Google Spreadsheet). I remember trying to resize columns was painfully slow at
the time; I had to create a ghost "separator" that appeared when resizing
lines and columns, and only actually resizes when the user releases the mouse
button.

Their use of divs instead of a table might be explained by issues like this.

Of course, this is no excuse for allowing it to break when zooming.

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brettcvz
Major props to my friend David for making this. It's a mashup of Handsontable
(<https://github.com/warpech/jquery-handsontable>) and Filepicker.io
(<https://www.filepicker.io/>)

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aristidb
That's a big editable table, not a spreadsheet. But as an editable table, it's
nice.

~~~
josephcooney
+100

First thing I did was type =SUM(C1:C4) into one of the cells...which, based on
the title, didn't do what I expected.

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rajeshamara
I will say good start but not useful though. Except entering numbers I
couldn't do any thing. One good thing is it is very light. The reason people
use excel because you can do lot more than just entering numbers.

~~~
brettcvz
Yeah I didn't want to say "Excel" because it's no where near excel level. But
it's still cool!

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rebelde
Why all the negativity?

I personally think the ability to open and save "cloud" spreadsheets was
nicely done.

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mtgx
Is this meant to be a Google Docs/Drive competitor?

~~~
brettcvz
Perhaps far down the line, for now it was just a quick hack exploring
Filepicker.io and Handsontable

