Grants talk:IdeaLab/Easier table's description

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What fails, and when?[edit]

Hi this is to comment on Grants talk:IdeaLab/Easier table's description. I apologize in advance if I misunderstand the problem. What I think is meant is that the top row (with headers) in a table might sort down among other rows, under some circumstances. For me, the current and past versions of the example page in the English wikipedia have sorted properly, without moving the header row. For the proposer, is your experience with some other language wikipedia where the wikitable doesn't work properly?

Here is a small version of the table (with header row and just 2 info rows, edited to de-link all links). It sorts okay for me.

Name Creator Initial public release Predecessor Current stable version Release date Cost, availability Preferred license Target system type
AIX IBM 1986 UNIX System V Release 3 7.2 2015, October 5 Nonfree/Bundled with hardware Proprietary Server, NAS, workstation
Android Android, Inc., Google 2008 Linux 6.0.1 Marshmallow 2015, December 7 Free Free/Apache 2.0, GNU GPLv2 Consumer, enterprise, military, education

Click to sort on "Creator" switches the rows; click to sort on "Name" to change the order back to the original order.

I think the problem needs to be clarified. I hope this helps. --Doncram (talk) 19:49, 15 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, sorry if i've passed the wrong idea. To be clear, what I really meant is to keep fix the header's row while the remaining content scrolls up and down. Usually the problem arises when the user scrolls down the page to see the remaining content of the table, losing track of column's header (the header's row). A clear illustration would be as seen in the first image:



As seen, in this illustration, the user has lost track of columns' headers, so user has to scroll back to top to see it (header's row/columns' headers).


The ideia is to keep columns' headers fixed in order that just the content scrolls down and up and the columns' header remains fixed as illustrated in the second image:
This is an approximated illustration of my point.
To have a functional table like this, the content needs to be scrollable, and header's row (column's header) fixed.
Dorivaldo de C. M. dos Santos (talk) 22:57, 15 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, now I understand. Yes, that is an important feature to have (or bug to have fixed)! I revised your problem and solution statements to make this more clear, I hope. At the same time I expanded it to cover the problem of scrolling horizontally. Hopefully these changes are helpful. Please revert or revise as seems best!  :) Doncram (talk) 17:14, 16 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]