Question

I’ve been implementing a grid view of some content – and I have it implemented as a genuine unordered list to get a nice block, visual look. Now I’m being tasked to implement the same data, but as a table. There are actions you can do on this data as well. The figure is meant to show switching, but the lists can be longer.

Now, I have a sense that I could use the existing unordered list structure, and add elements to it and then “fake” a table view, which actually doesn’t seem that much harder. Or I could do it the other way, change everything to a table view then implement the grid view with CSS.

My question is, what are some approaches to do this? I could double up my markup – implementing both, and then switching between. But in an AJAX heavy application, I’m doing twice the DOM manipulations to add this stuff.

Is there a best practice for being able to toggle a view like this? I’m looking for ideas and working examples, especially.

---

I’ve updated this with a jsFiddle showing an unordered list as the basis. Does anyone have any example CSS that uses a table as the basis?

Answer 1

Well, nobody took me up on doing this with a table-centric approach, so below is the code for a ul>li centric approach:

HTML:

<div class="controls">
    <a href="#" class="list active">List</a>
    <a href="#" class="grid">Grid</a>
</div>

<div id="wrapper">
<ul class="list">
    <li class="header"><h2 class="name">Name</h2>
        <p class="date">Start Date</p>
        <p class="title">Title</p>
        <div class="image">Image</div></li>
    <li class="even"><h2 class="name">Adam Ant</h2>
        <p class="date">1995</p>
        <p class="title">Specialist</p>
        <div class="image"><img src="http://www.placehold.it/200x200" alt=""></div></li>
    <li class="odd"><h2 class="name">Brian Box</h2>
        <p class="date">2005</p>
        <p class="title">Specialist</p>
        <div class="image"><img src="http://www.placehold.it/200x200" alt=""></div></li>
    <li class="even"><h2 class="name">Clara Clock</h2>
        <p class="date">2010</p>
        <p class="title">Manager</p>
        <div class="image"><img src="http://www.placehold.it/200x200" alt=""></div></li>
    <li class="odd"><h2 class="name">Darla Dock</h2>
        <p class="date">1996</p>
        <p class="title">Editor</p>
        <div class="image"><img src="http://www.placehold.it/200x200" alt=""></div></li>
</ul>
</div>​

CSS:

body {
    font-family: sans-serif;
}
.controls {
    text-align: right;
    width: 500px;
}
.controls a {
    background-color: #000;
    color: #fff;
    display: inline-block;
    padding: 6px;
    text-decoration: none;
}
.controls a.active {
    background-color: blue;
}

#wrapper .list li { 
    width: 500px; 
    position: relative;
    height: 30px;
}
#wrapper .list li.odd * {
    background-color: #eee;
}
#wrapper .list li.header {
    background-color: #666;
    color: #fff;
}
#wrapper .list li * {
    position: absolute;
    line-height: 1;
    top: 0;
    display: block;
    height: 30px;
}
#wrapper .list li h2.name {
    left: 0;
    width: 150px;

}
#wrapper .list li p.date {
    left: 150px;
    width: 100px;
}
#wrapper .list li p.title {
    left: 250px;
    width: 100px;
}
#wrapper .list li div.image {
    left: 350px;
    width: 150px;
}
#wrapper .list li div.image img {
    height: 20px;
    width: 20px
    margin: 0 auto;
}

#wrapper .grid li { 
    display: inline-block;
    width: 200px; 
    height: 200px;
    position: relative;
    overflow: hidden;
}
#wrapper .grid li.header {
    display: none;
}
#wrapper .grid h2.name {
    background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
    color: #fff;
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    top: 0;
    width: 200px;
    line-height: 2;
    height: 30px;
}
#wrapper .grid p.date {
    display: none;
}
#wrapper .grid p.title {
    display: none;
}

​

JavaScript (using MooTools):

$$('a').addEvent('click', function(){
    $$('.controls a').toggleClass('active');
    $$('ul').toggleClass('list').toggleClass('grid');
    return false;
})

​