This is a migrated thread and some comments may be shown as answers.

Grid questions/suggestions # 1

2 Answers 156 Views
General Discussions
This is a migrated thread and some comments may be shown as answers.
Ben Hayat
Top achievements
Rank 2
Ben Hayat asked on 18 Nov 2008, 10:39 PM
Perhaps other developers would like to add their votes to some of these suggestions, so the team can get a vote on it.

Firstly, I must say for CTP, this thing looks great. The first impression of a user would be "Looks professional". My compliments to the team!

Q: If I'm editing/adding data and I'm in a cell, how do I move to the next cell using the keyboard? Normally many grids provide the option of Tab key or enter key.

Q: When an end user opens a grid, How would he/she know how this list of data is sorted before he clicks on a column to sort it for. It would be nice to have some form of indication which column is the key or sorted column when data shows at first. However, that could pose a problem, if the column is outside of the view. So, some indication is needed.

Q: Suppose I open the grid and I need to jump to a particular record to edit or view, without scrolling. It would be great to have "Search" built in based on the fields collections.

Q: In order for me to add a new record to the grid, the grid requires me to click on another row to make the grid in focus before I can press the "Insert" key. Is it possible to click on the "header" of the grid to get it in focus instead of a data row? The reason I ask is that, while I was entering a record, I decided to delete my new record by pressing the "Delete" button. Guess what, the original data row that was clicked first got deleted and not the "New" record.

Q: I like the feature when scrolling, the grid is not trying the update the grid and showing the "Key" field, which is very time saving. If you scroll to the top, you'll see the first record, however if you scroll to the bottom, you will not see the last row, but the first row of the last page. Is this a bug or by design. It's kind of misleading.

Q: If we put several grids in a "PanelBar" that might not be visible, when a SL page shows, does the system try to load all the grids, even though they are not visible? Can we we get them to fetch the data when the panel is visible?

Q: How is the memory consumption if multiple grids have been placed on one page.

S: It would be great that a grid would have a toolbar with series of buttons to go First, previous, next, last, Add, Edit, Delete, and show the row # you're on and how many rows are available in the collection. On the top or bottom of grid.

S: it would be great to have another button on the toolbar to see the selected row to show as a form for view or editing. Even better, the grid might show only a few columns, but the form can show more than it's available on the grid. This form can show up as a popup form on the grid's surface.

S: It would be nice for a grid to show child grid. For example, looking at the customers, be able to see it's orders, and for each order be able to see the line items.

S: Let's say I put a grid on a form with lots of columns on the grid, but I set the font to be very small to fit as many columns as I can make visible. It would be great option to have a Magnify glass to see each cell in a larger fonts. Picture this,first you click a button to turn the magnify glass ON, and as you move the mouse on any cell, you will see the cell in a "Tooltip" in a larger font. So this way, if someone wants to see something more clear, they can use the magnify glass.

S: It would be great for a grid to be scalable in Size. For example, in Blend option you can make the panes smaller or bigger. Or VS, when you view a XAML page, there is a scroll bar on the top left corner that will scale the preview. Something like this.

S: A nice graphical filtering system would great for future. i.e. A user can select a field (Customer City) and then an operator (Less than or equal or etc.) and then the append more conditions as "AND" or "OR". This feature will minimize our codes tremendously because, not each one of us needs implement this feature.

S: It would be nice to be able to see image in a cell. And later on be able to see long text.

There are "Only" suggestions and not demands or requests. So, take them as you desire!
..Ben

2 Answers, 1 is accepted

Sort by
0
Accepted
Pavel Pavlov
Telerik team
answered on 20 Nov 2008, 03:28 PM
Hi ..Ben,
Thank you for taking time to evaluate our RadGridView for Silverlight CTP.

Q: If I'm editing/adding data and I'm in a cell, how do I move to the next cell using the keyboard? Normally many grids provide the option of Tab key or enter key.

Keyboard navigation (including Tab key)  is one of the things we are trying to improve for the beta version ( expected in the middle of December)

Q: When an end user opens a grid, How would he/she know how this list of data is sorted before he clicks on a column to sort it for. It would be nice to have some form of indication which column is the key or sorted column when data shows at first. However, that could pose a problem, if the column is outside of the view. So, some indication is needed.

Our WPF grid has similar feature but it is only supported for 'smart' datasources such as ColectionView (it has sortdescriptions). Collections typically used in Silverlight do not provide a way for the grid to automatically guess whether data is sorted or not.  So providing a visual feedback for out-of-the-grid  sorting is a little bit tricky.  If such behavior is critical, there are ways to access visual elements of the grid (e.g. sort indicators)  and manipulate them programmatically.

Q: Suppose I open the grid and I need to jump to a particular record to edit or view, without scrolling. It would be great to have "Search" built in based on the fields collections.

This is a great suggestion. I have spoken to my teammates and they are very positive about it.

Q: In order for me to add a new record to the grid, the grid requires me to click on another row to make the grid in focus before I can press the "Insert" key. Is it possible to click on the "header" of the grid to get it in focus instead of a data row? The reason I ask is that, while I was entering a record, I decided to delete my new record by pressing the "Delete" button. Guess what, the original data row that was clicked first got deleted and not the "New" record.

Focus management and keyboard navigation still need polishing and this is one of our priorities for the upcoming beta version.

Q: I like the feature when scrolling, the grid is not trying the update the grid and showing the "Key" field, which is very time saving. If you scroll to the top, you'll see the first record, however if you scroll to the bottom, you will not see the last row, but the first row of the last page. Is this a bug or by design. It's kind of misleading.

Deferred scroll is one of the techniques we use to increase the perceived scrolling performance of our RadGridView. The scroll position indicator shows the first row that will appear. Since we make special efforts not to show the "ugly blank space" bellow the last row, the grid will not allow scrolling to the very end. As soon the last row is visible the user can not scroll down any further . This is by design.

Q: If we put several grids in a "PanelBar" that might not be visible, when a SL page shows, does the system try to load all the grids, even though they are not visible? Can we  get them to fetch the data when the panel is visible?

Such behavior can be easily achieved by setting the ItemsSource property of the RadGridView in the right event of the PanelBar (e.g. Expanded or PreviewExpanded events)

Q: How is the memory consumption if multiple grids have been placed on one page.

Memory consumption will not be affected badly by the count of the grids placed on a page. It will depend mainly on the data used as items source for those grids.  We are aware that web based applications are sensitive in this context and we are going to provide a paging functionality and ways to obtain data in portions on demand.


S: It would be great that a grid would have a toolbar with series of buttons to go First, previous, next, last, Add, Edit, Delete, and show the row # you're on and how many rows are available in the collection. On the top or bottom of grid.

I am not sure those will be included as features for the RadGridView. However such tasks are easily achievable by just modifying the template and adding the right code  to handle UI interaction. I think we may work on providing an example in our QSF with some reusable code to copy/paste. I guess this will be mostly used in paging scenarios and we'll think about that when we do the paging feature.

S: it would be great to have another button on the toolbar to see the selected row to show as a form for view or editing. Even better, the grid might show only a few columns, but the form can show more than it's available on the grid. This form can show up as a popup form on the grid's surface.

We have the CurrentRecord property . Any UI can be bound to it in order to provide an alternative way for viewing/editing data. This is one more good candidate for a cool example in  our QSF.

S: It would be nice for a grid to show child grid. For example, looking at the customers, be able to see it's orders, and for each order be able to see the line items.

We support hierarchy in our RadGridView for WPF. Since our SilverLight RadGridView shares a common code base, it is a matter of time for us to have this feature available in Silverlight also .

S: Let's say I put a grid on a form with lots of columns on the grid, but I set the font to be very small to fit as many columns as I can make visible. It would be great option to have a Magnify glass to see each cell in a larger fonts. Picture this,first you click a button to turn the magnify glass ON, and as you move the mouse on any cell, you will see the cell in a "Tooltip" in a larger font. So this way, if someone wants to see something more clear, they can use the magnify glass.

I 'm not sure a lot of customers would need such a feature. However templating the GridView cell with a tool tip or kind of popup in it is quite an easy task. If such behavior is needed I'm pretty sure we can provide some XAML to cover such specific scenario without the need of modifying the grid's codebase.

S: It would be great for a grid to be scalable in Size. For example, in Blend option you can make the panes smaller or bigger. Or VS, when you view a XAML page, there is a scroll bar on the top left corner that will scale the preview. Something like this.

I believe binding the value of a slider to the ScaleTransform property of the grid would do the job right ?  It may be easily integrated in a custom theme for the grid also.

S: A nice graphical filtering system would great for future. i.e. A user can select a field (Customer City) and then an operator (Less than or equal or etc.) and then the append more conditions as "AND" or "OR". This feature will minimize our codes tremendously because, not each one of us needs implement this feature.

You are definitely right. Such feature does exist in our schedule. However it is a heavy one and I can't tell whether it would be present in our very next release.

S: It would be nice to be able to see image in a cell. And later on be able to see long text.
I believe in the QSF for our beta (coming in the middle of December) you will see images and long text  in some of the examples.


Sincerely yours,
Pavel Pavlov
the Telerik team

Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
0
Ben Hayat
Top achievements
Rank 2
answered on 20 Nov 2008, 03:56 PM
Thanks Pavel!
Tags
General Discussions
Asked by
Ben Hayat
Top achievements
Rank 2
Answers by
Pavel Pavlov
Telerik team
Ben Hayat
Top achievements
Rank 2
Share this question
or