Friday 4 Mar 2016

Four years ago I shared an idea to make tabular data responsive. Browser support was experimental and the workarounds were extremely hacky. I revisited the technique this week, cleaned it up, and I am pleased to say all modern browsers work perfectly.

See the full demo on CodePen

Here’s what basic overflow looks like:

And if you want to flip the axis:

There are several adjustments you should make to suit your content (breakpoints, min-widths, etc). Read the notes below the CodePen demo. The CSS there is also commented.

Usability

When it comes to responsive tables there is no one size fits all solution. Tables are good for housing a lot of data but on small screens data comparison is difficult because the visible real estate is very limited. There will never be a single plugin that solves this problem.

My solution simply makes <table> elements scrollable and offers an optional axis flip if appropriate to the content. It doesn’t magically solve the user experience.

Maybe a table isn’t the answer!

If you’re looking for professional front-end design give me a shout. We can find a more accessible way to display your content.

Scrolling shadows

Around the time I originally published this idea, Lea Verou wrote about Pure CSS scrolling shadows. The shadows act as a visual indicator for content overflow and invite scrolling. Nicer than a hard cut-off in my opinion.