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The article is an excellent example of how something that seems easy and common-place ("show tabular data in a table") requires a lot of work to make it really good.

I'd say this is common to a lot of our work as developers. On the face of it a task seems easy - but it typically involves adding lot of fine detail to make it excellent.




> The article is an excellent example of how something that seems easy and common-place ("show tabular data in a table") requires a lot of work to make it really good.

One thing they don't mention, is exporting. Anytime you're dealing with tabular data, you really need an "export to excel" button. You'll never be able to do all the slicing, filtering, and sorting that excel can do. By all means, add it into your app and hopefully over time your users won't need it, but at the start, it's vital.


I wish apps allowing editing tables were oriented around a workflow where you export to Excel, edit it there, and reimport it back. Let's be honest, your web app's table is never going to be anywhere near as ergonomic and functional as Excel, so why not just leverage it?


Looking from my experience I'd say: it typically involves adding lot of fine detail to make it at least bearable




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