Re: [Tiki-devel] The default look of tables

Hi Volker,

What "looks good" of course is in the eye of the beholder, as the saying 
goes. It seems that, over time, the idea of tables not necessarily 
having borders, or a complete set of borders, has become more popular. 
For example, this article "40 Best CSS Table Templates For Creating 
Appealing Tables 2024" (https://uicookies.com/css-table-templates/) 
shows a number of table designs. Some have the traditional bordered 
appearance, but more have either only horizontal borders or alternating 
row background colors, or no border or background color distinctions at 
all. Other image searches for "web design tables" turn up similar results.

This article - 
https://medium.com/design-with-figma/the-ultimate-guide-to-designing-data-tables-7db29713a85a 
- breaks down visual styles of tables this way:

"*Grid:* Including both horizontal and vertical lines provides the most 
separation between data points, but the excess visual noise can be 
distracting. This spreadsheet-style is recommended for dense, data heavy 
tables.

*"Horizontal Lines:* Only showing horizontal lines reduces the visual 
noise of a full grid. This style includes plenty of white space while 
still helping the user keep their place while reading. This style is the 
most common and recommended for all data set sizes.

"*Zebra Stripes:* Alternating different color backgrounds for each row 
is another good way to help users keep their place while reading. This 
style is recommended for larger data sets where the alternating pattern 
will be clear and not cause confusion that a particular row is highlighted."

This seems to be typical of the thinking about the table design that 
Bootstrap produces, and Tiki uses. By default, the tables don't have 
grid-like borders for the reason the Medium.com article states. My 
personal opinion is that tables with complete borders look rather dated 
and overly "spreadsheet-looking" when used for the presentation of 
general information but are good in the context of heavy data presentation.

In the end, not everyone will be pleased with the default, whichever way 
it goes regarding borders, etc., and so some custom CSS might be needed 
to suit the particular Tiki site.

-- Gary


On 5/2/2024 4:34 PM, Volker Wysk wrote:
> Hi.
>
> Tables in wiki pages, using the Tiki default style sheet, don't look good at
> all. There are no borders. Sure, this can be improved with a custom style
> sheet.
>
> Configurability is good. But you shouldn't be *forced* to configure. There
> should be a reasonable default.
>
> So I ask you, the Tiki team, to add the following to Tiki's default style
> sheet. It will draw borders in tables.
>
> table
> {
>      margin: 0 0 0 0;
>      border-collapse: collapse;
>      width: auto;
> }
>
> th, td
> {
>      padding: 0.25em 0.5em 0.25em 0.5em;
>      border: 1px solid tan;
> }
>
> td p {
>      margin: 0;
>      padding: 0;
> }
>
> Cheers,
> Volker
>
>
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