Tables in WD9 (Premium)

Whenever there's a new version of WD, the first thing I check out is whether there's support for tables...This for many non-techie clients who simply want to present and update data in a tabular form (e.g. a list of upcoming conferences with dates and locations, a list of publications with authors and download link and so on). The new table widget is not flexible enough - but am I correct that a grid/table structure could be made using the new push features? For example, the products page on the Telesales Template looks as though extra rows and colums could be added - as well as column dividers... and these could be resized automatically according to the content? If so, what would be the simplest way to set this up?
Thanks,
Yaffa

Have a look at my recent answer here: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...ver-make-sense!.

What you need to do is design your row with graphics, fonts vertical bars, text boxes and group them together then Position on Page > Push ticked.
With snap to object, grid or guides, positioning should be simple. Moving each group up or down repositions the others.

Acorn

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Have a look at my recent answer here: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...ver-make-sense!.

What you need to do is design your row with graphics, fonts vertical bars, text boxes and group them together then Position on Page > Push ticked.
With snap to object, grid or guides, positioning should be simple. Moving each group up or down repositions the others.

Acorn

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Thanks, this sounds logical for the setup and I'll b trying it. But I also need to be able to give simple instructions for non-technie users e.g. 'Enter your conference details in the grid. If you want to add a row, do XXXX. If you want to delete a row, do XXXX.'

Very simple for them to to do this in most web design programmes, plus CMSs and Google sites etc. So I'm wondering if this now can be done easily in Xara.

Yaffa

You can also set up a table using Tabs.

This is an old Guest Tutorial but the idea still works http://www.xaraxone.com/guest/guest82/

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Originally Posted by gwpriester

You can also set up a table using Tabs.

This is an old Guest Tutorial but the idea still works http://www.xaraxone.com/guest/guest82/

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Thanks but unfortunately, while this indeed works, it is way too complicated to give to my clients.

It is very frustrating. They can open Xara, select a template, move items around, edit the buttons and really feel in control of everything. Then they say: How do I 'just' insert a table with the dates of my conferences?' And I have to tell them there's no easy way. So they end up using a different product which is really overkill for what they need.

Well I'll try to set them up a grid using the new 'push' features.
Yaffa

There is a table widget available Designs gallery > Page elements & widgets > Other widgets. It allows you to enter CSV data in the Widget editor, causing a simple table to display with sortable data and pagination.

Its not suitable for all table cases but might help you. Note: Its possible that we'll create additional table styles and types as widgets.

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Originally Posted by bb2

There is a table widget available Designs gallery > Page elements & widgets > Other widgets. It allows you to enter CSV data in the Widget editor, causing a simple table to display with sortable data and pagination.

Its not suitable for all table cases but might help you. Note: Its possible that we'll create additional table styles and types as widgets.

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Thanks - I saw this gadget and it's ok as far as it goes, but too complex for the non-techie user who just wants to put some elements in a grid/tabular format and adjust them easily. WD is exactly what these people are looking for regarding the graphical elements of their site. They don't need a full-blown CMS or even Google Sites. But the aim of their sites is NOT to display pictures but to convey information in a user-friendly way. So they do need more control over the way their text elements are laid out on the page.

Re the table widget gadget, is there any way to have a URL display as a link?
Thanks
Yaffa

How about this method Xhris shows http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTkggsBp_5Q
Very simple and well explained. Takes a couple of minutes to reproduce it yourself :)

you can have a url display as a link but im afraid its slightly technical again to achieve this.

IN the example csv data below, the word John has been linked to http://www.xara.com and the word John is also linked to this address but its target is set to _blank causing the linked page to be retrieved within a new window.




Categories, Apples, Pears, Oranges, Bananas
<a href=http://www.xara.com>John</a>, 8, 4, 6, 5
<a href=http://www.xara.com target=_blank>John</a>, 5, 7, 9, 8
Joe, 8, 6, 7, 7
Janet, 3, 6, 3, 10
James,5,7,12,8
Joanne,4,9,4,7

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Originally Posted by PeteS

How about this method Xhris shows http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTkggsBp_5Q
Very simple and well explained. Takes a couple of minutes to reproduce it yourself :)

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Indeed it's nice and I can probably reproduce it in a couple of minutes - but I could not recommend this up to the non-techie user, who has just a few lines of text to display in tablular format and may need to alter it (including removing intermediate rows).

I'm not criticising the technical capabilities of Xara, just saying that there is a huge difference in usability for its graphics and text features when it comes to displaying text in a structured way. Will experiment with the new push feature over the weekend, as that seems to have the best potential..

Ideally I'd like to see in the designs gallery a set of grid templates which you could drag over to a page (like text panels) with simple instructions to add and remove rows.
Yaffa

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Originally Posted by bb2

you can have a url display as a link but im afraid its slightly technical again to achieve this.

IN the example csv data below, the word John has been linked to http://www.xara.com and the word John is also linked to this address but its target is set to _blank causing the linked page to be retrieved within a new window.

Categories, Apples, Pears, Oranges, Bananas
<a href=http://www.xara.com>John</a>, 8, 4, 6, 5
<a href=http://www.xara.com target=_blank>John</a>, 5, 7, 9, 8
Joe, 8, 6, 7, 7
Janet, 3, 6, 3, 10
James,5,7,12,8
Joanne,4,9,4,7

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Thanks, that could be useful (though indeed not something I'd pass on to a non-techie user)
Yaffa

Yesterday my wife was using CorelDraw to make some diagrams with tables. My first rection was that I might suggest using Xara to do it, but then I realised that while I can fudge tables in Xara, for most people wanting to create a table, their expectation is to type away in a table element as they do in a word-processor. So I left her to continue with CorelDraw.

It's about time Xara did incorporate native table functionality, I think. It's been long overdue.

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Originally Posted by Acorn

What you need to do is design your row with graphics, fonts vertical bars, text boxes and group them together then Position on Page > Push ticked.
With snap to object, grid or guides, positioning should be simple. Moving each group up or down repositions the others.

Acorn

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If anyone's been able to use the push feature to set up a simple grid which could be used as a table I'd be grateful to see it. Should be simple but I'm continually running into problems. Latest is getting internal program error 1462.w.co.rt. when I try to move vertical bars.
Thanks,
Yaffa

Hi please can you submit the problem file to the support team or upload a cutdown version of your file here so the problem can be logged?

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Originally Posted by pauland

It's about time Xara did incorporate native table functionality, I think. It's been long overdue.

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+1

think xara should take a look at wysiwyg web builder - just drag table into document - set rows and colums and style - and bobs your uncle - done !! - xara is still the king in the graphic dept though

I have to agree that it is a feature that I looked for but missed in this product. I do like many of the features but to take information that is sent on a spreadsheet and try to import it into this program was somewhat of a disappointment. I am going to have to try to do an update of my initial work this evening in a different manner but it would have been nice to have a table to drop it in. Sort of select the grids and cut and paste to the cells. No fuss no worry.

I am always fearful when I give the rights for others to write into a web site significant data. I have had Joomla made sites databases corrupted by others who wanted the ability to input data. It is far easier to get people to copy text from their word processors paste it in giving minimal data and then get them to link that data to a PDF/CSV for download. Spending 1/2 an hour with a client and leaving written instructions can save a huge amount of time rather than having to sort a complete site out because of the lack of knowledge.

Maybe this is just me but when I look at a web page it is got to be better than a printed page and a page on the web that uses tables as a list/information data shutters come down over my eyes. Even using Word with its multiple templates and styles I have only seen a few which I would give a second glance to. However Info Graphics or banners can give meaning to facts and figures and thank goodness tables are so rarely seen now as a way of constructing a web page. Taking information and giving it a visual twist is the web forte and that is why I find that I have no real interest in Twitter I would rather use Facebook although twitter is a powerful medium when used correctly.

Hello,
Problem with Xara trying to create a table system is that many people would expect it to do calcuations, etc. Most people that want to create a table are familiar with Microsoft excel and they have spent years creating everything anyone could want in a table. I created the attached table in a couple of minutes in excel and then copied it to clipboard and pasted bitmap into Xara; then used Xara feature to add shadow. What could be simplier?

I created the attached table in a couple of minutes in excel .. What could be simplier?

Not everyone has Excel, or Word.

many people would expect it to do calculations, etc.

I doubt that. Many people manage to use Word without doing spreadsheet tables.

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Originally Posted by zee

Problem with Xara trying to create a table system is that many people would expect it to do calcuations, etc.

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As Pauland, points out, bad assumption.

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What could be simplier?

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Doing it natively in Xara, of course...

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Originally Posted by pauland

Not everyone has Excel, or Word...

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That's true. LibreOffice, though, is OpenSource. And if one already has yet another application that can generate tables, and can produce tables in it, one can always generate a PDF and import it.

That said, truly native tables with the ability to style them (even manually) would be a good thing.

Cannot see it happening in XDP anytime soon. I would like to be surprised.

Mike

One solution is to use Google Docs or Google Drive as it's known now.

Create a Google drive account then create a new spreadsheet. Set up as many columns and rows as you require.

Then File/Publish to the Web
Complete the relevant fields

Select HTML to embed in a page.
Copy the source code

Open Web Designer
Create a placeholder
Paste in the copied code into the body section
Apply
Preview

By default Google sets the view size to 500 x 30 px. Alter this in the placeholder to suit your table size.

You can also right click the placeholder and Position on Page/Push so it will automatically push any content below it and the page bottom down as you ammend the google doc.

This method has a few of advantages:
1: Your client only needs to adjust the google doc to amend the websites table.
2: You can incorporate formula.
3: The client only needs to adjust the placeholder height to extend the table down the screen.

I attach the web file to view the final product.

SEE THE VIDEO HEREAttachment 95541

That's a pretty good solution to the problem. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, it works quite well. If you don't want the header & footer bit of the table it's quite easy to add rectangles filled with the page background colour over the top to hide these. See attachment.

Yes, that would work, but if a client would want to add rows or columns, the placeholder size and the covering rectangles would have to be adjusted in the .web/.xar document. Unless, of course, you would make the placeholder much bigger than initially needed but that might compromise the page design.

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Unless, of course, you would make the placeholder much bigger than initially needed but that might compromise the page design.

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There's 2 ways of doing it, depending on how much the client was likely to want to amend the table.

1: You could use a small placeholder and google automatically adds the scrollbars.

2: Use a pop up layer to have a very large placeholder which could accommodate tables that are likely to alter considerably.