> You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app?
I think the point of the article was that the author never thought this, but presupposed the answer was always 'yes'. It wasn't until looking at alternative implementations that this question popped up.
I've done the same myself. I once implemented sortable live lists (lists that may be updated with added/removed items in the background, with only part of the list shown and the rest retrieved from the server). I wondered, 'how should this work?' and cast around for other examples. At first I used the (old) Google Reader model: two lists, one is 'All items', the other is 'New items'. But then I realised that, actually, sorting doesn't add anything, and indeed might confuse people who expect predictable order in their lists. Problem solved: don't allow sorting, instead provide a canonical order.
I think the point of the article was that the author never thought this, but presupposed the answer was always 'yes'. It wasn't until looking at alternative implementations that this question popped up.
I've done the same myself. I once implemented sortable live lists (lists that may be updated with added/removed items in the background, with only part of the list shown and the rest retrieved from the server). I wondered, 'how should this work?' and cast around for other examples. At first I used the (old) Google Reader model: two lists, one is 'All items', the other is 'New items'. But then I realised that, actually, sorting doesn't add anything, and indeed might confuse people who expect predictable order in their lists. Problem solved: don't allow sorting, instead provide a canonical order.