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Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

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Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#111

Post by hogFeast »

detaro wrote: post #107
hogFeast wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not - https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/9110914?hl=en - after Facebook, everyone is tightening up these permissions.

Okay, it's wider than just GMail, I had missed the addition of Drive, but according to that link an audit is just required for > Drive - Any Drive API scope that permits an application to read, modify, or manage the content or metadata of a user’s Drive files, without the user individually granting file-by-file access. I could be wrong, but to me this suggests you can use the Sheets API against a user-specified docum…

Correct, an audit that can cost somewhere between $10-70k (you pay, not Google)...like I said in my first post.

Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#112

Post by MiSeRyDeee »

tjchear wrote: post #2

So from talking to people I see a need to quickly turn a spreadsheet of information into something visually pleasing. SheetUI is my response to that need. You give it a Google Sheet URL, pick a template, and tap in the columns where you want them to show up. In return you get a visually pleasing and responsive web page that you can embed on your site, or link to in your newsletter or chat with a client. Created with…

What would be your business model?

Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#113

Post by priomsrb »

fermienrico wrote: post #110

Crazy I know: why not just link them to the sheet? If the goal is for one person to convey information to another, why do we need to “decorate” it? I kind of like some of the Brutalism takes on web design. Just throw away all decoration and live with the ugly world, “ugly” being subjective. I think excel sheets are actually quite beautiful. Challenge the status quo :-) at the expense of coolness, dignity and comfort.

Ugliness aside, there are some things that don't work very well in a plain spreadsheet vs a UI. For example large paragraphs and images.

Part of conveying information should be about making the information easy to digest. Sometimes a spreadsheet fits that bill. Other times a crafted UI works better.

Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#114

Post by chris_st »

tjchear wrote: post #2

So from talking to people I see a need to quickly turn a spreadsheet of information into something visually pleasing. SheetUI is my response to that need. You give it a Google Sheet URL, pick a template, and tap in the columns where you want them to show up. In return you get a visually pleasing and responsive web page that you can embed on your site, or link to in your newsletter or chat with a client. Created with…

I have a personal website backed by a Google sheets page; however, it started not handing out proper CORS headers on the request, so it no longer works for me.

Have you run across this? How did you solve it? Thanks!

Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#115

Post by fermienrico »

priomsrb wrote: post #113
fermienrico wrote: post #110

Crazy I know: why not just link them to the sheet? If the goal is for one person to convey information to another, why do we need to “decorate” it? I kind of like some of the Brutalism takes on web design. Just throw away all decoration and live with the ugly world, “ugly” being subjective. I think excel sheets are actually quite beautiful. Challenge the status quo :-) at the expense of coolness, dignity and comfort.

Ugliness aside, there are some things that don't work very well in a plain spreadsheet vs a UI. For example large paragraphs and images. Part of conveying information should be about making the information easy to digest. Sometimes a spreadsheet fits that bill. Other times a crafted UI works better.

It does if you create large cells and stick paragraphs in. Make sure the width of the cell is enough for 12-15 words. Images also work just fine. It truly boils down to "uglyness" and not functionality. "Easy to digest" is a subjective term.

Excel sheets are essentially rectangular grid with borders. Grids have been used since the 60's in graphic design, primarily championed by the Swiss Grid System (Josef-muller brockmann, et. al).

So if you say that excel sheets are not a good instrument to convey information, you're saying that a grid like structure is not good at laying out information in a logical, understandable fashion. Which is provably false - everything from Tax forms to road signs, every bit of graphic design professionally conducted uses the grid system.

Think a bit deeper than just aesthetics and ask yourself, what exactly is an excel sheet? It is a bunch of boxes. Whether those are div elements or excel cells, what's the difference? Padding and margins?

Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#116

Post by tjchear »

franciscop wrote: post #105
tjchear wrote: post #2

So from talking to people I see a need to quickly turn a spreadsheet of information into something visually pleasing. SheetUI is my response to that need. You give it a Google Sheet URL, pick a template, and tap in the columns where you want them to show up. In return you get a visually pleasing and responsive web page that you can embed on your site, or link to in your newsletter or chat with a client. Created with…

This looks great! I made a while back a library[1] to do this, but of course you still have to code on top of it (which is what I wanted). Your project makes it very easy for everyone to get started and not only those who know how to code, props on launching it. Are you using Node.js? Would love some feedback on my lib since it seems we are doing the same thing for different user types! [1] https://github.com/francis…

I use Next.js, but the sheet is loaded client side :) My next iteration would switch to Cloud sheets API though.

That said, I wish I had stumbled upon your library when I first started out. It looks better designed than the one I initially used (which I promptly abandoned because it couldn't handle certain errors properly, and I decided to roll my own).

Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#117

Post by tjchear »

MiSeRyDeee wrote: post #112
tjchear wrote: post #2

So from talking to people I see a need to quickly turn a spreadsheet of information into something visually pleasing. SheetUI is my response to that need. You give it a Google Sheet URL, pick a template, and tap in the columns where you want them to show up. In return you get a visually pleasing and responsive web page that you can embed on your site, or link to in your newsletter or chat with a client. Created with…

What would be your business model?

A subscription model on more template choices, read/write capabilities, and external integrations. Complete site/app generation from sheets is not out of the question :)

Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#118

Post by tjchear »

joelrunyon wrote: post #106
tjchear wrote: post #2

So from talking to people I see a need to quickly turn a spreadsheet of information into something visually pleasing. SheetUI is my response to that need. You give it a Google Sheet URL, pick a template, and tap in the columns where you want them to show up. In return you get a visually pleasing and responsive web page that you can embed on your site, or link to in your newsletter or chat with a client. Created with…

Do you have demos of current sites using this?

They are currently used as private use webpages for either private communities or to clients. I do not have a publicly viewable website I can show you, because frankly SheetUI is fairly new and no one has used it for that yet.

Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#119

Post by tjchear »

fermienrico wrote: post #110

Crazy I know: why not just link them to the sheet? If the goal is for one person to convey information to another, why do we need to “decorate” it? I kind of like some of the Brutalism takes on web design. Just throw away all decoration and live with the ugly world, “ugly” being subjective. I think excel sheets are actually quite beautiful. Challenge the status quo :-) at the expense of coolness, dignity and comfort.

Ooh I have some opinions about this, and I largely agree with you (crazy, I know).

One idea I have is to go back to the simpler days of MSDOS GUI. We can generate such a UI using some custom markdown, and for the most part it does simple CRUD, with plugin support for complicated stuff. The focus will be on speed (keyboard navigable with Windows alt+ shortcuts), and brutalist UI in the form of MSDOS GUI.

Re: Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages

#120

Post by franciscop »

tjchear wrote: post #116
franciscop wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks great! I made a while back a library[1] to do this, but of course you still have to code on top of it (which is what I wanted). Your project makes it very easy for everyone to get started and not only those who know how to code, props on launching it. Are you using Node.js? Would love some feedback on my lib since it seems we are doing the same thing for different user types! [1] https://github.com/francis…

I use Next.js, but the sheet is loaded client side :) My next iteration would switch to Cloud sheets API though. That said, I wish I had stumbled upon your library when I first started out. It looks better designed than the one I initially used (which I promptly abandoned because it couldn't handle certain errors properly, and I decided to roll my own).

Thanks! I've been thinking of renaming it. Everyone who uses it loves it, but I have to first nag people into actually trying it and I think it's because it'd not very discoverable.

What names did you use to try to find it if you don't mind me asking?

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