Nitobi User Forums

[gjm]

(I'm currently evaluating version 3.23 because that's what was available when I started work; perhaps things are different in 3.4?)

Suppose some grid cell contains more data than can be displayed in the width available. So far as I can currently tell, the only way to see it all is to edit the cell, at which point you can move the editing cursor around.

It would be very nice if (1) the columns were resizable and/or (2) hovering over a grid cell popped up a tooltip containing the full contents of the cell. Am I right in thinking that neither of these is possible?

[JC]

Columns are resizable in 3.23.

Tooltips would be great... See this previous thread on the subject: http://forums.ebusiness-apps.com/viewtopic.php?t=1697

Thanks,
JC

[gjm]

Ah. They're resizable ... but only when using Internet Explorer. (More precisely: not on Firefox. I haven't tested on anything other than IE and Firefox so far.) That's a bit sad. If there are any Nitobi folks listening, it would be nice if this worked cross-platform.

[JC]

I can resize the columns in Firefox 2.0. It's a bit tricky as you have to get the cursor position just right, but it's doable :)

Thanks,
JC

[gjm]

I don't seem to be able to, and I'm using Firefox 2.0 as well. Perhaps I'm making some wrong assumptions here. What exactly should I be doing? I've been assuming: left-click in header bar thingy, as exactly as possible on the boundary between two columns; hold the left button down and drag left or right. I can't find any position to click where that works, so maybe I'm all confused.

[mike_nitobi]

I'd love to see tooltips too. :)

Anyways, column resizing does indeed work in Firefox, as JC already pointed out. Between columns, there's a divider indicator (looks like | ) and if you mouse over it, the cursor will look like one of these <-> after which you'll be able to resize.

This isn't meant to be facetious (apologies if it seems that way). As you said, maybe there are some incorrect assumptions being made so its best we clear those up immediately.

[gjm]

No, it doesn't seem facetious. Just strange since for me, mousing over the | dividers does *not* make my cursor change and no amount of clicking and dragging on or near them makes the columns resize. Honestly.

Looks like a bug somewhere. Any suggestions for tracking it down? (If anyone else is reading this who uses the Nitobi grid and Firefox: do you have the same problem?)

If I haven't misunderstood the other thread "JC" pointed at, tooltips were present in an older version of the grid. If they aren't in the present version, should I assume that adding them would be difficult even with the unobfuscated source? Not having them and not being able to provide them would be quite a major issue for our application.

[gjm]

Aha, got it. I hadn't been aware that the grid won't work right when the browser is in standards mode. In Firefox (at least for me) forcing quirks mode by omitting the doctype doesn't make any substantial difference to the appearance of the table, but it does stop column resizing working correctly. (In IE7, forcing quirks mode makes the difference between a table that appears just as it should, and one that's totally garbled; it's testing with IE7 that provoked me to investigate more...)

[gjm]

Oh, and one other thing. Tooltips would still be a Very Good Thing; is there any way to get those, or any likelihood that they'll be available in future versions of the grid?

[joe_nitobi]

The issue of adding Tooltips to Grid has been recorded, and it may be added to a later version. Unfortunately, I am not able to give a timeframe as to when this may happen. We are also looking to fix DOCTYPE issues in a future release as well.

[dcwebman]

[gjm]

See http://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html
and http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Mozilla's_DOCTYPE_sniffing
for more gory details about Mozilla-based browsers such as Firefox.

Brief answer: if your web page doesn't have a <!DOCTYPE...> at the top, modern browsers will render it in "quirks mode", meaning that in some respects they prefer compatibility with older browsers over following the standards correctly. This is a necessary feature because there are such a lot of pages out there that were written for older browsers. And, it turns out, there are also some people writing modern Web 2.0 AJAX grids that depend on quirks mode too. :-)

[gjm]

(I forgot to say: Thanks for the update, Joe.)

[dcwebman]

[dcwebman]

I think I figured out why I'm not getting a resizer line in Firefox. Take the Basic grid example and simply add these lines in the appropriate place within the grid: