Table Tool or Table Bloc

Wish List
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I’ve written about the need for a Table Tool or Table Bloc extensively in the forums, but after reading a post by @handshaper today, I was encouraged to formalize this Wish List feature request. Indeed, @mackyangeles made it a part of his 2018 Wish List. And although @Eldar very kindly shared his Blocs document showing how to create tables in Blocs, it is a painstaking process prone to error and wastes a huge amount of my time, quite frankly. Even @Norm said he hopes someone makes a Table Bric!

We either need this built into Blocs (the best approach) or when the Blocs Store opens maybe an enterprising coder genius could put together such a tool. But an easier and faster way to build tables is greatly needed in Blocs. Yes, I mean Blocs 3, not Blocs 4 or 5 or Blocs 26. We really need it now.

Thanks,

James

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Yes, you have written about the need for tables “extensively”. Do think another post for the same thing is going to help this happen? How many posts do you need to create? For me, it’s becoming very annoying… the duplicate post is a waste of the forum’s resources…and please I don’t need a five paragraph reply. Just my observation, like it or not.

Casey

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I think that @Norm is not replying to some of the requests because he knows (and i’m Only assuming that) that the Bric store will reply to a lot of requests. This one and a lot of others, that @JDW and others users ask for. I know that the store will have free and payed products, but I only ask @Norm please to make the store fair. Just keep BlocsApp upgrading is own core features, regarding if there is Bric or not that have that feature. As someone explain, it could have a standard free/core Bric, and could be a paid Bric in store with more resources…

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@Pealco I know Norm knows about the wants of the forum members. It’s well documented in many forum areas. I’m sure we are going to see more advances with the store and also developers adding content also. We can only assume there will be changes. As a person who has used Blocs from the beginning, I can tell you it’s come a long way in a short time. I’m not against users adding wish list items but when they are continually repeated I feel its a big waste of time.

casey

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I was also looking for a way to replace tables as the format itselfe is quiet often needed on my side.
But since @Eldar underlined my way way of using rows as a repalcement I am not missing tables anymore at all - infact - They are there! It just needs to approach blocs in the “blocs way” and get rid of comparising this app with Freeway or others.
A lot is possible with this app and sometimes so easy if you are willing to be open learning differnet workflows.

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I strongly disagree and have written a rebuttal here.

I disagree. My time has value, and I believe I have used it prudently, positively, and for the good of Blocs. With that said, we don’t have to agree to be friendly. I hold no animosity toward you or the other couple forum members who so frequently chastise me in this forum. What you are seeing in me is nothing more than my passion for Blocs. The worst thing any of us can do is become apathetic toward the app. We may not agree with others in this forum when exchanging ideas, but at least we are contributing. And in the end, Norm can decide what he wishes to do. The ball is in his court, not ours; but we are all still in the game. It is my own contention that repetition is a good thing, not bad.

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As I continue to rebuilt my existing large website in Blocs, which involves a lot of tables, I all the more wish for a dedicated table tool and here’s why.

I start off building tables using the approach established by @Eldar. It’s not a bad technique. It simply is time consuming and currently is the only way to build tables in Blocs. But let’s say you build a fairly elaborate table with numerous rows and columns in Blocs. Later you come back to your tables because someone in your company wants alternating row colors added. With a dedicated table tool, adding that is easy, but doing it in Blocs now takes a lot of manual labor. You may have other things to do on your daily agenda that means you really don’t have time to spend muckying around with tables hours on end.

So let’s say you spent those hours and got your alternating row and column colors added. What if you are then asked to add thin divider lines in between certain rows and columns? There’s no easy way to do that now in Blocs. It takes a lot of unnecessary time and manual labor. But when you need to add tables in a site like I do, you have no choice but to spend days upon days doing that drudgery.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when dealing with tables. Web design is always a moving target because people who dictate what goes into the site are constantly making revisions. I need to be able to make those revisions as fast as possible.

I must be blunt. It matters nothing to me if everybody else out there using Blocs “doesn’t care about tables at all.” I really don’t care. I have a job to do which is not dependent on what others do in Blocs. And I disagree with the argumentative quip, “Well, then Blocs isn’t the app for you!” How insensitive and wrong such statements are! No, Blocs is THE app for me, yet it can be improved. And one small way Blocs can take a huge leap forward is with a dedicated Table Tool. I therefore am happy to tout this need from the highest hill. And despite the naysayers, I will persevere. When you say something often enough and loud enough, it will be heard by the right ears and the resulting action taken will be a boon to everyone. Believe it or not, it will. Until then, back to the drudgery…

James

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@JDW i don’t know what kind of table you need, but if it is a normal table, I found a table generator that you can costumize everything, and it generates a code, if you need to change it later you can import the table, make changes and then re-generate the code.
Give a look at this:

You have even an extras options like this:
image

Hope it helps you, and others users.

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I agree. Are use tables a lot and I am having a problem finding a table. Does anyone have knowledge of the table?

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There’s no easy creation tool. It’s painstaking to create tables for tabular data in Blocs. I did it only by using nested Rows and Columns and Paragraphs, with appropriate padding, of course. Then you have to style your text with Classes.

You can see an example on this page in my website. Scroll down just past the yellow table. (The yellow table is a graphic.) You will see a huge gray table. View that in a browser. Slowly narrow the browser window width to see how I handle that. At some point, I had to make certain table data vanish in order to keep everything looking right and without the text getting too small.

So basically you have to build it by hand, piece by piece, using rows and columns and paragraphs. Even if that was all you had to do, it’s a lot of work. But then you have to adjust the content for each breakpoint. And then you must decide what information in your table, if any, should be hidden at smaller breakpoints.

To make the “gaps” in medium gray header, I had to create a special class and apply that to each Column. The class contains a light gray Border. But the troublesome part is that if you decide to remove content in smaller breakpoints, you will need to adjust your class to account for that. So you may need a vertical light gray border on only the right side sometimes, but other times you may need to add a border on both the left and right side of a column. Again, those “borders” simulate visual “gaps” between the header blocks in the table.

Lastly, I alternated the background color of rows to make long tabular data easier to see.

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Well how about adding the ability to add a spreadsheet.? Rapid weaver has a stack where you can add a spreadsheet to a webpage. Can you do that? I would much rather use blocs than rw and Spreadsheets or tables are holding me back from making the change.

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Can’t we all just get along here? This is such unprofessional behavior. It’s a legitimate request.

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Com’on @gmedlock, @casey1823 made a valid point on a topic that is now 2 years outdated. Regardless if you agree or not with his opinion, It’s not fair to say that his behaviour is unprofessional. If you feel adding spreadsheets to a site should be possible you should send a future upgrade request to @Norm which you can do so here.

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I did send a future upgrade request. Also have you ever heard of the term, the squeaky wheel gets the grease? Just because we talk about it a lot doesn’t mean that it’s being addressed. If you continue to ask for something, eventually people will address it. That’s how it works. Casey getting upset about somebody asking for the same thing over and over is counterproductive.

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I really like blocs. The problem is, that I use a lot of spreadsheets in my websites and that stops me from using Blocs as a program. It can’t be that hard. Other companies have done it. Why can’t Blocs? Let’s get the show on the road.

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Hi @gmedlock, I’ve done a bit of research (and please correct me if I’m wrong) Adding spreadsheets is not part of RapidWeaver itself but its an add-on offered by third parties at an additional cost ranging from $30 to $40 bucks on average. From this point of view Blocs and Rapidweaver, in it’s core, don’t offer this solution. It’s a third party who does. This means, the question is, if there’s any third party Blocs developer who’s interested in developing a bric which can handle spreadsheets. So far not. There must be a reason behind it.

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@gmedlock
You hit the nail on the head. And I am not in any way bashing Jerry by saying that. Jerry is very active in this forum and extremely helpful. I disagree about his contention that Casey made a “valid point” though, for reasons I will now explain.

Regarding others having piled onto me in this thread in the past, believe me, the same folks have done it in other threads. There are many well-intentioned and otherwise very helpful people who sometimes are deeply embedded in a forum and who tend to dislike forum newcomers who very strongly and repetitively appeal for some big change. They think certain feature requests are not necessary or perhaps feel any such change would take away some kind of goodness they already have. They also hate it when you mention another web design tool, as I have, even though it’s clear I used the tool in the past and have now embraced Blocs. And repetition of your request often drives them to post overly aggressive things against you. The straw that really breaks the camel’s back is when you write lengthy defensive posts as I do. I think that’s because these folks are used to shutting down others quickly, whereas I don’t back down on things I am passionate about.

People who have jumped on me in the forums also seem to mistakenly think that I am not grateful enough or that I don’t see how great Blocs is. Those folks miss the point of the “Wish List” entirely. Why I need to say “thank you” in every single post, or be so humble so as to never ask for anything is something I personally cannot understand.

As you can see from the age of this thread, I gave up all hope that a dedicated Table Tool would happen in Blocs. That isn’t me bashing Blocs. That isn’t me bashing its great developer, which I would never do because I know he is an amazing person with whom I talk a lot to privately. He has added a huge number of features that I alone have touted, in fact. It’s always very humbling and delightful to me when that happens. But since a Table Tool wasn’t forthcoming, I had to do a huge amount of manual labor to implement tables on my site. That isn’t me bashing Blocs, its developer, or people in this forum — it’s just reality.

The example web page I posted for you earlier is the fruit of my labors. And what I do now is Duplicate those tables on other pages in my Blocs websites and then hand-manipulate them into whatever other table variant I need. Compared to Freeway Pro, which I used in years past, it can take an entire day to get a table right, versus a dedicated tool which would have a very complex table done in perhaps 30 minutes. But the best I can do in Blocs is find a way to make my goals achievable. I am a Bloc user true and true now. I don’t use any other tools to help me design for the web.

It saddens me that I am among a rare few people who seem to need a Table Tool for tabular data. It would be a great productivity booster. Surely if MOST people needed it, there would be a dedicated tool by now. But I think it is something based on demand. Sure, it’s probably very hard to create a “responsive” table tool in Blocs, whereas the non-responsive tools like Freeway Pro used were much easier to create for its developer. But the fact is that tables are quite hard and time consuming to create by hand for Blocs users, even if you have an existing Blocs table to use as a template.

I will admit that the more you use Blocs, the faster you become with it. That helps keep me sane when I create new tables in Blocs. But it still takes a lot of time and fiddly operations to get it to look right across all breakpoints.

Based on what you have written in this thread, I consider you a friend in this forum. I will now humbly offer my personal advice…

Whenever you have a new feature you feel passionate about, don’t allow anyone in the forum to shame you. Boldly present it (tactfully and kindly, of course), and see where it leads. I think you have done that in this thread, and I applaud your passion! I am a firm believer in “Ask and ye shall receive” and “If you don’t ask, you won’t receive.” If I see similar posts of passion from you in this forum, I will back you even if I don’t need the same feature myself. That’s what the Wish List is for. I never feel personally threatened by the feature requests of fellow Blocs users, nor do I try to argue with them about why their passion is unnecessary.

You and I are in some ways kindred spirits. On Monday when I get into the office, I will create a stripped down single page version of my big table so you can more easily see what I did and therefore be able to, perhaps, replicate my manual creation technique in your own sites. It’s still not as good as a dedicated table tool would be, but it’s the best we have for now. I’ve not seen anyone else in this forum who has bested my tables in Blocs either. That’s not so much tooting my own horn as it is a shocking example of just how few people are like us and want tabular data presented in a responsive table.

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Thank you very much for those words. Those kind words. And yes I would love to look at Single page version of your table. Perhaps a bloc or a bric could be made from this.

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Another thing to consider is that this can give Blocs 4 a competitive edge against other web design software’s. Rapid Weaver has a table but it’s still kind of quirky. I think that Blocs should spend more time on making a table.

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Unprofessional behavior? Give me a break! Unprofessional behavior is continually asking the same thing over and over thinking that if I ask enough I’ll get my way. @gmedlock looking at your profile you’re brand new to Blocs, I’ve been using Blocs from day one, over four years ago, and I’ve always supported Blocs and helped many users. @JDW has also helped a lot of users and been active in the forum. My only gripe was I get tired of something that is continually brought up that it’s something that there’s really not a perfect solution. @gmedlock good luck with Blocs.

Casey

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