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Thread: need table help

Number of posts in this thread: 18 (In chronological order)

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Tue, Jan 18 2005 8:42AM
Subject: need table help
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I'm laying out a data table and trying to figure out how to best use
headers. The data looks like this:

name | status
====================================person | status
-------------------------------------
employer 1 | status
-------------------------------------
employer 1 | status
====================================person | status
-------------------------------------
employer 1 | status
-------------------------------------
employer 1 | status
====================================
The 'person' is the key element of each record, and each person has two
employers. The 'name' TH makes sense for each person, but for each employer,
it'd make more sense to use the person as the header for that item.

In turn, each left TD should be the TH for the right TD status field.

What's a good way to mark this up? :

Name
Status

person
status

employer
status

-Darrel

From: Patrick Lauke
Date: Tue, Jan 18 2005 9:03AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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> From: darrel.austin
[...]
> What's a good way to mark this up? :
>
>
> Name
> Status
>
>
> person
> status
>
>
> employer
> status
>

Looks ok-ish to me. Belt and braces approach would be to also use
scope and to give an id to the headers in the first row. Something
like (hope I'm not getting this wrong):

Name
Status

person
status

employer
status

Patrick
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

From: Chris Heilmann
Date: Tue, Jan 18 2005 9:25AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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>
>> From: darrel.austin
> [...]
>> What's a good way to mark this up? :
>>
>>
>> Name
>> Status
>>
>>
>> person
>> status
>>
>>
>> employer
>> status
>>
>
> Looks ok-ish to me. Belt and braces approach would be to also use
> scope and to give an id to the headers in the first row. Something
> like (hope I'm not getting this wrong):
>
>
> Name
> Status
>
>
>
> person
> status
>
>
>
> employer
> status
>

Both rather wrong. The scope is the easiest approach, and the attribute is
called "headers" not "header". You cannot link to a TD via headers, you
need to link to a TH.

So

Name
Status

Person
Status

Person
Status

With id / headers:

Name
Status

Person
Status

Person
Status

More detail: http://icant.co.uk/forreview/tables/

HTH
Chris

--
Chris Heilmann
http://icant.co.uk/ | http://www.onlinetools.org/

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Tue, Jan 18 2005 9:44AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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Chris/Patrick:

Thanks for the feedback.

Chris, regarding your example:

>
>
>
> Name
> Status
>
>
>
>
> Person
> Status
>
>
> Person
> Status
>
>
>

If one can not link to a TD using the Headers attribute, how would one best
accomodate the two-tier level of headers I need? (ie, NAME is the header for
NAME, but then NAME would be the header for EMPLOYER)?

Could I do something like this:

Name
Status

Person
Status

Employer
Status

Actually, now that I look at that, it looks like Patrick's example only
using more TH tags. Is the above valid, though? Can a TH have a parent TH of
its own?

-Darrel

From: Chris Heilmann
Date: Tue, Jan 18 2005 9:50AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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>
> Chris/Patrick:
>
> Thanks for the feedback.
>
> Chris, regarding your example:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> Name
>> Status
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Person
>> Status
>>
>>
>> Person
>> Status
>>
>>
>>
>
> If one can not link to a TD using the Headers attribute, how would one
> best
> accomodate the two-tier level of headers I need? (ie, NAME is the header
> for
> NAME, but then NAME would be the header for EMPLOYER)?

Person would have to be a th with a scope of row, the same for employer.
If the employer is also linked to the person you need to use headers instead.

--
Chris Heilmann
http://icant.co.uk/ | http://www.onlinetools.org/

From: Patrick Lauke
Date: Tue, Jan 18 2005 10:05AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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> From: lists38
[...]
> the attribute is
> called "headers" not "header".

Fair enough, a typo due to copying the original email and hacking away
at it.

> You cannot link to a TD via
> headers, you
> need to link to a TH.

So why does this sort of thing appear in the WCAG1.0 techniques?
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#identifying-table-rows-columns
See third example.

>
>
>
> Name
> Status
>
>
>
>
> Person
> Status
>
>
> Person
> Status
>
>
>

Unless I misunderstood Darrel's original question, the table he
wanted to mark up was a complex table, while the solution you
propose turns it into a simple table which looses some of the
associations (employers are tied both to name/status and
person/status).

Patrick
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Tue, Jan 18 2005 10:36AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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> Person would have to be a th with a scope of row, the same for
> employer.
> If the employer is also linked to the person you need to use headers
> instead.

Right...the data relationship is like this:

Employee
- person's name
- - person's status
- - employer 1
- - - employer 1 status
- - employer 2
- - - employer 2 status

So, the person has a header of 'employee' and the employer has a header of
'person's name' which leaves person's name having to be both a child of one
header, and a header of another TD. Is that valid/accessible?

-Darrel

From: Chris Heilmann
Date: Tue, Jan 18 2005 11:03AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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>
>> From: lists38
> [...]
>> the attribute is
>> called "headers" not "header".
>
> Fair enough, a typo due to copying the original email and hacking away
> at it.

Ah, no worries.

>> You cannot link to a TD via
>> headers, you
>> need to link to a TH.
>
> So why does this sort of thing appear in the WCAG1.0 techniques?
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#identifying-table-rows-columns
> See third example.

Coupled with Axis.

> Unless I misunderstood Darrel's original question, the table he
> wanted to mark up was a complex table, while the solution you
> propose turns it into a simple table which looses some of the
> associations (employers are tied both to name/status and
> person/status).

Nopes, I misunderstood it. See my last email in this thread.

--
Chris Heilmann
http://icant.co.uk/ | http://www.onlinetools.org/

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Tue, Jan 18 2005 1:07PM
Subject: Re: need table help
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>>> You cannot link to a TD via
>>> headers, you
>>> need to link to a TH.
>>
>> So why does this sort of thing appear in the WCAG1.0 techniques?
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#identifying-table-rows-columns
>> See third example.
>
> Coupled with Axis.

Looking at Axis, it seems to make sense when your table has two axises
(axi?) but I'm not sure if that's really what I have. Well, I do, but it's
not the key issue I'm having problems with. It's the relationship between
employee and employer with them both being in the same column that I'm
confused about.

-Darrel

From: michael.brockington
Date: Wed, Jan 19 2005 7:03AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: darrel.austin [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
> Sent: 18 January 2005 20:00
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] need table help
>
>
> Looking at Axis, it seems to make sense when your table has two axises
> (axi?) but I'm not sure if that's really what I have. Well, I
> do, but it's not the key issue I'm having problems with. It's
> the relationship between employee and employer with them both
> being in the same column that I'm confused about.
>
> -Darrel

Perhaps you need to move the employer name into a second column, like so:

Employee Name | Employer | Status
______________________________
Joe Bloggs | | Active
| Company One | Active
| CompanyTwo | Active

Mike

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From: KNOCK Alistair
Date: Wed, Jan 19 2005 7:22AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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Axes. Given that each employee always has two employers, is there
anything wrong with:

Employee Name | Employee Status | Employer 1 Name | Employer 1 Status |
Employer 2 Name | Employer 2 Status
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------

(that's 6 columns, in case it wraps)

That would be the most usable solution, given that you want person to be
unique. I know that's not visibly what you were after, though to me
your original sketch didn't make sense semantically unless you gave each
record its own table and repeated the headers - there's no intrinsic
association between employee and employers otherwise, that is if you
want work out which is which.

If you don't mind duplicate employee rows, then you could just have:

Employee Name | Employee Status | Employer Name | Employer Status
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Employee A | Happy, thanks. | Employer 1 | Stressed
Employee A | Happy, thanks. | Employer 2 | Chilled

But you then end up duplicating employee name and status and there's a
whole lot more to read through. I'd opt for the first layout in a
non-web situation, so presumably would opt for the same in a web
situation. That makes it easier to mark up sensibly too, I think?

Incidentally, what kind of weird corporate structure is this? :)

Alistair

> -----Original Message-----
> From: darrel.austin [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
> Sent: 18 January 2005 20:00
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] need table help
>
>
>
> >>> You cannot link to a TD via
> >>> headers, you
> >>> need to link to a TH.
> >>
> >> So why does this sort of thing appear in the WCAG1.0 techniques?
> >>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/>;
#identifying-table-rows-column
> >> s
> >> See third example.
> >
> > Coupled with Axis.
>
> Looking at Axis, it seems to make sense when your table has two axises
> (axi?) but I'm not sure if that's really what I have. Well, I
> do, but it's not the key issue I'm having problems with. It's
> the relationship between employee and employer with them both
> being in the same column that I'm confused about.
>
> -Darrel
>
> ----
> To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>
>

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Wed, Jan 19 2005 8:53AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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> Axes. Given that each employee always has two employers, is there
> anything wrong with:
>
> Employee Name | Employee Status | Employer 1 Name | Employer 1 Status
> | Employer 2 Name | Employer 2 Status

The visual layout doesn't work as well with that much data on the y-axis.

For now, this is what I presently have:

employee | employer | employer
----------------------------------------------------
Employee Name | Employer 1 Name | Employer 2 Name
Status | Status | Status
----------------------------------------------------
(3 columns)

And I may leave it at that, since the status, when read out loud, will make
sense. (ie, "Bob Smith, inactive")

> That would be the most usable solution, given that you want person to
> be unique. I know that's not visibly what you were after, though to
> me your original sketch didn't make sense semantically unless you
> gave each record its own table and repeated the headers

Well, that's what I was trying to accomplish...a semantic structure based on
a particular visual layout. ;o)

> Incidentally, what kind of weird corporate structure is this? :)

Specifically, these are independant contractors who work for independant
companies.

-Darrel

From: James Bailey
Date: Wed, Jan 19 2005 11:40AM
Subject: need table help
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If the table works visually and your concern is screen-reader access, I
would consider using IDs. I don't think this has been suggested, which
makes me wonder if there some flaw in it.

James Bailey
Adaptive Technology Access Adviser, University of Oregon
1299 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1299
Office: 541-346-1076
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Wed, Jan 19 2005 12:47PM
Subject: Re: need table help
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jbailey wrote:
> If the table works visually and your concern is screen-reader access, I
> would consider using IDs. I don't think this has been suggested, which
> makes me wonder if there some flaw in it.

It *has* been suggested in the very first reply to this thread.

--
Patrick H. Lauke
_____________________________________________________
re

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Wed, Jan 19 2005 1:28PM
Subject: Re: need table help
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>> If the table works visually and your concern is screen-reader
>> access, I would consider using IDs. I don't think this has been
>> suggested, which makes me wonder if there some flaw in it.
>
> It *has* been suggested in the very first reply to this thread.

But then it was decided that IDs can only work with THs. Not sure if we ever
answered the multiple TH issue, though. ;o)

-Darrel

From: aknock
Date: Thu, Jan 20 2005 2:54PM
Subject: Re: need table help
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From: michael.brockington
Date: Thu, Jan 20 2005 2:55PM
Subject: Re: need table help
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From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Fri, Jan 21 2005 8:27AM
Subject: Re: need table help
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FYI, in the end, I've simplified the table:

http://www.courts.state.mn.us/bailbonds/bailbond_agentlist.aspx?subsite=Bail
BondAgents&pageID=188

(page needs a lot more work, but the table works now.)

-Darrel