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Column Display Widths
It would be nice to be able to set the input fields widths during edit/view, and the field widths of the grid view.

(At the very least, wouldn't it be relatively easy to set "EDIT" field widths to the value in the column definition?, e.g a text field of size 10, could be 10 chars wide in the edit form? )

krc
ID
164
Category
Setup
Author

Kevin Cook
Date Created
9/25/2007 5:50:19 PM
Date Updated
12/17/2021 10:14:07 AM
Status
New Idea
Score
640
Promoted By
Guillermo Vazquez sacopablo@yahoo.com.arHarry Morrow
Andrew vickerstaffRobert GustavssonLuison Lassala
LinnetteBin Xia ZhangJoseph Kurian
Nacho Alvarez de ToledoBilly HodgesRobert Chimento
Jeff AibelJohn DAmeliopeter forman
Ansar AhmadJorge SoláMark Ramage
Rafael MuñizDave Ah ChingDale Oliver
Norman Houghtonrishi uttamLynne Manzo
Daniel Vazquez GerLocation LogicLuison Lassala
martin oliverPhilip EvansDesmond Beatty (Conc)
Carol RentasMark ForsythArnold Hakobyan
lucas benitesJan SchoonDavid Gardineer
Phil GilbertJasmine StoneleyDesmond Beatty
Nils OrthPhilipp Matuschka (MMB)Rick Cogley
Andrew WintersScott Millerbeo
chris dagesseRick CogleyGraham White
DonJ-Adi Marketing ExpertMichael Rennertbasenine
Kevin SmithMatthew PorterMaximilian Mueller
david sultaniAnnette ChamberlainAnatoliy Zachynskiy
John ElcikRyan Van Der VorsteThat Computer Guy
inquiries@westedgesolutions.comAlfredo BravoMatan Barnea
Kevin Cook
Comments
Michael Rennert 8/15/2009 8:13:44 AM
It would also be nice to be able to set the column alignment. It's very often the case that you would want to center text (or align right) rather than have it left aligned.

Less important, but still desirable would be the ability to modify the alignment of the column header, along with an alternate name for the column, which you can already do.
Rick Cogley 7/27/2010 6:16:49 PM
Yes agreed. This would add just that much more polish. We have a bilingual Japanese and English app that sometimes displays just a bit strangely. These width and justification tweaks for columns would be welcome.
Scott Miller 9/9/2010 3:20:52 AM
Hi

Views/Reports can appear ungainly as there is no option to define the column width. At the moment they appear to be dynamically set. This option would allow the user to specify the width.

Thanks
Scott
beo 9/9/2010 4:34:20 AM
... as well as the length of the field parameters of the filter, Multi - line text fields...
beo 9/9/2010 4:42:34 AM
beo 9/9/2010 4:44:29 AM
Please, implement, it is very necessary! For example, in the mode Customize Columns.
Rick Cogley 9/10/2010 5:19:41 PM
Agreed. It may seem like a minor thing but an adjustment in column width can mean the difference between a 20 page report and a 10 page report when compactly formatted. --Rick
Kirill Bondar  Staff  4/1/2011 8:43:23 AM
Merged with:
364 - Set Column Width on Views/Reports
Desmond Beatty (Conc) 12/6/2013 4:28:14 AM
The absence of the ability to adjust column width means having to make poor compromises on what data/columns to include/exclude in a report based on how many rows the forced word wrap produces.
Philip Evans 1/16/2014 12:31:31 PM
100% agree with this - column widths are the 1st major disappointment for me - the grid look like a basic spreadsheet from the 80s. Styling like CSS would be great with colours, font sizes etc.
basenine 4/7/2014 4:03:31 AM
I like @Philip Evans...."Looks like a spreadsheet from the 80's" - made me smile😀

The whole views-look is quite harsh... a softer appearance would be nicer to read and interpret
rishi uttam 3/24/2015 5:12:57 AM
I agree with Philip, the grid in details view looks very dated. I dont need a extra wide autonumber field, i spent 2 hours trying to figure out why i could not adjust column widths in a view, later to realize that it wasn't possible.

I am sure management can add this feature withing a couple of hours...

This will enable us to create better and easier to use forms and views.

can we get this worked on, perhaps sometime this year? this post is going back to 2010!


rishi uttam 3/24/2015 5:16:28 AM
Correction, this post is dating back to 2007, and nothing has been done, not even a reason why this is not being looked at? Is there a technical reason why this cannot be implemented?

Lynne Manzo 7/6/2015 5:38:58 PM
Management - PLEASE take a look at this issue. Our users regularly complain to me that some columns are wide and virtually empty whilst other columns extend down the page making them hard to read and spoiling the whole look of the page. They cannot believe it when I tell that column widths cannot be controlled!
Rishi has asked an excellent question - is there a technical reason why column widths (or even relevant column widths given the range of screen sizes) cannot be set?
Lynne Manzo 7/6/2015 5:41:08 PM
Sorry - that was meant to read "relative" column widths. (i.e. make column "A" always shows as twice the width of column "B").
Kirill Bondar  Staff  7/7/2015 4:53:03 AM
If you check "Display without wrapping" box, column's width will be set to a longest text in a column. It is checked by default for dates, times, durations, timestamps and numbers. You can check it for columns known to contain short texts too, freeing the space for other columns.


basenine 9/30/2015 4:48:20 AM
When you look at this image

https://goo.gl/photos/XGvSfT4ChRyJGGxj8

I have a view with a Text field right next to a Numeric field. It makes no sense as to why the Text field width is LESS than the Numeric field width...


Kirill Bondar  Staff  9/30/2015 5:11:14 AM
Numeric inputs have fixed width, text inputs are resizable
basenine 9/30/2015 5:13:24 AM
Resizable? Can you show me how to do this please? This whole thread is about being able to resize column widths. Is there something we're missing?
Kirill Bondar  Staff  9/30/2015 5:56:38 AM
inputs, not columns
Andrew Winters 6/24/2016 7:20:11 AM
The problem with "display without wrapping" in some cases is that it defaults the width to the longest record in the table, which makes the view far too wide. But, for the same column, if I display without wrapping, it only uses about 7 characters per line. This makes the record far too long going down. Either way there is a lot of wasted space on the screen and it would be very helpful to set the exact column width per column, per view.
Joseph Kurian 8/7/2020 9:56:16 AM
This post has got lot of promotion but TD is not implementing this. I would like to see the customization in the edit form and grid in columns width and alignment.

Billy Hodges 9/20/2021 7:42:21 AM
This post has got a lot of promotion since 2009 and still hasn't had much action from TD.

Luison Lassala 12/16/2021 10:02:51 AM
Could we get an update on this issue from TD? Is there any technical reason why it has not been delivered? My users keep asking for resizable columns in Table Views.
Billy Hodges 12/16/2021 10:14:55 AM
I agree with Lulson Lassala...it would be good if TD would reply or at least issue updates in the threads of these requests if for no other reason than to let us know that they have been received, are being considered, are not able to comply, etc. Like I said in my post on 9/20/21, this request originally came in on 8/15/2009 and I count it's been promoted by at least 61 TD users.

Just an update, TD, if you will. And from 61 users...we thank you.
BH
Kirill Bondar  Staff  12/17/2021 7:52:44 AM
We keep silence because we do not have definitive solution.

TeamDesk is a web site that renders on a wide variety of devices ranging from handheld phones to 4k TVs; the amount of information that fits to this or that screen varies greatly.

So far we outsource table layout job to the browser since it does the best job in average.

For dates, checkboxes, numbers, and some short texts the best option is to make the column wide enough just to fit the content in one line - that's exactly what "display no wrap" trick does.

Width specification is indeed helpful for columns containing long texts, but specifying fixed width won't likely work. Here is why:

Suppose you have 5 columns with 250px width set -- total table width is 1250px.

Tables in TeamDesk take all available width.

On Full-HD monitor 1920px wide there would be an extra 670 pixels we would need to distribute between columns. Adding 670/5 = 134px to each column is simplest but far from optimal solution -- some column could have text just enough 250px width and extra space won't make it any better, while the other column could have longer text that wraps and distributing extra space from other columns to it could help to make it compact.

1st gen of iPad Pro is 1024px wide -- these are logical pixels browser operates with. Following fixed width specification precisely 5 columns won't fit there -- the user will have to scroll horizontally, while making each column 45px narrower could help to avoid horizontal scrolling while sacrificing a little of vertical space.

Given two cases above I could count at least four parameters needed to specify column's width:

Optimal width for some ideal screen where everything fits perfectly.
Minimum width, shrinking further does not make any sense (Andrew Winters mentioned "7 characters per line", that's nonsense) - that is for the case when table that does not fit the screen.
Maximum width, growing beyond does not make sense - that is for the case when the screen width exceeds optimal table width.
And the percentage to help with distribution of extra space to the column.

The question is will you really want to specify all four?

Billy Hodges 12/17/2021 8:08:44 AM
Klrill,

This is a great explanation and a great update for the question at hand. Thank you for taking the time to post this. Now, at least the 61 people who have 'upvoted' this topic over the years will have something to go on as to whether or not they want to continue to see such a change or...given the current explanation...they see the logic behind the system and are happy to continue on as is. At least that is one "wish list" item that could be marked off or pursued after having acquired a better understanding of the problem and its possible solution.

Thanks again,
bh

Jorge Solá 12/17/2021 8:35:50 AM
Thank you, Kirill. As usual, we, the users, are not aware of everything that goes on behind the scenes.

A couple of ideas, in case they help.

I understand a total revamp entails a lot of thought, but maybe a few tweaks to increase flexibility would be a good stopgap solution.

- Increasing the number of columns in forms from 4 to 8 would provide a lot more flexibility.
- Being able to tweak the alignment in columns (& in title columns) would also be welcome.
- To answer your last question, Kirill, no, we don't want to specify 4 different column sizes. In most situations it's much better to have it work automatically. But the possibility of being able to adjust this manually in certain situations would be nice.
- Sometimes you also have table views with only 3 or 4 columns. In those cases, it would be better if the table would not fill the whole screen, because when that happens, the columns look very far apart on a big screen.
- So I'm totally in favor of automatic sizing of columns, but it would be nice to add some ways to control the appearance when things don't look nice or practical.

Luison Lassala 12/17/2021 10:14:07 AM
Thank you Kirill, that's the kind of explanation people were hoping to get. Everyone here appreciates that there might not be easy solutions to many of the Ideas/Requests in this forum, but it does help to keep us informed of progress or reasons that make the request unworkable. So all you need to do is let us know from time to time, and we'll learn to live with it.
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