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Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

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Re: Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

#52

I still cannot wrap my head around why so many folks want to use such applications in a web browser. For me, web browser applications never reach the responsiveness and ease of use of well crafted desktop applications written in any decent systems programming language or even interpreted languages (not speaking of Javascript). Maybe I am getting old, but having the browser as a platform for programs is huge setback f…

The browser is very accessible and understandable as an environment as compared to different kinds of desktop environments that exist. Sometimes having an imperfect thing which exists is better than a non-existent perfect thing. Sure, a web application will never be as snappier as a native application, but it can be built, deployed and maintained by a much smaller team than what would be required for supporting desktop applications for multiple environments. If it feels 'good enough' to the users, they won't care.

Re: Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

#53
I will keep saying this every single time some one gets this wrong (which is at least 49 times out of 50): the only way to handle scrolling properly on the web is for your scroll events to fall onto a real scrollable area, and to observe the effect it has (e.g. apply the scroll position to what you’re rendering with). This can be tricky to achieve well when you have dynamic content that the mouse needs to be able to interact with within that area, but it is possible to do well, with careful application of `position: sticky` and/or `position: fixed`.

As it stands, scrolling is nigh unusable on my Surface Book: vertical scrolling goes at a million times the speed it should, and horizontal scrolling goes a million times as fast as it should in the wrong direction.

Don’t do scrolljacking. It’s bad, every single time. With the tools the web gives you it’s not possible to get it completely right that way.

Re: Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

#54
post #52

I still cannot wrap my head around why so many folks want to use such applications in a web browser. For me, web browser applications never reach the responsiveness and ease of use of well crafted desktop applications written in any decent systems programming language or even interpreted languages (not speaking of Javascript). Maybe I am getting old, but having the browser as a platform for programs is huge setback f…

The browser is very accessible and understandable as an environment as compared to different kinds of desktop environments that exist. Sometimes having an imperfect thing which exists is better than a non-existent perfect thing. Sure, a web application will never be as snappier as a native application, but it can be built, deployed and maintained by a much smaller team than what would be required for supporting deskt…

>Sure, a web application will never be as snappier as a native application, but it can be built, deployed and maintained by a much smaller team than what would be required for supporting desktop applications for multiple environments.

A webapp has a wide range of operational costs that a native app doesn't. I can't see why a modern webapp would be cheaper to develop as well with similar programming languages. Their advantage comes mainly from the lack of the need to install software, and for the data to be accessible by every device.

Re: Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

#55

I still cannot wrap my head around why so many folks want to use such applications in a web browser. For me, web browser applications never reach the responsiveness and ease of use of well crafted desktop applications written in any decent systems programming language or even interpreted languages (not speaking of Javascript). Maybe I am getting old, but having the browser as a platform for programs is huge setback f…

> For example, as a free Excel alternative, I fall back to Gnumeric ( http://www.gnumeric.org/ ) from time to time. Gnumeric is useful, but its GUI is very laggy (more laggy than LibreOffice Calc). Sadly, there NO fast & usable Qt-based alternative to Excell for Linux yet. As lightweight spreadsheet app for Linux I use Qt-based mtCellEdit [0], which does not support .xls/.xlsx formats & could not fully replace Excell…

https://calligra.org/sheets/

Re: Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

#56

I will keep saying this every single time some one gets this wrong (which is at least 49 times out of 50): the only way to handle scrolling properly on the web is for your scroll events to fall onto a real scrollable area, and to observe the effect it has (e.g. apply the scroll position to what you’re rendering with). This can be tricky to achieve well when you have dynamic content that the mouse needs to be able to…

Absolutely. In the development process of our product DataGridXL we've also experimented a lot with "scrollwheel" events and such, for months really. It's just not possible to get it to feel natural. You might be able to get it working nicely on one specific OS+browser combo, but that's about it.

Always listen to the native "scroll" event: https://www.datagridxl.com/demos/one-million-cells

Re: Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

#57

I still cannot wrap my head around why so many folks want to use such applications in a web browser. For me, web browser applications never reach the responsiveness and ease of use of well crafted desktop applications written in any decent systems programming language or even interpreted languages (not speaking of Javascript). Maybe I am getting old, but having the browser as a platform for programs is huge setback f…

No installation

Multiple tabs/windows

Don't leave the browser

Works-at-all on multiple platforms incl mobile

Deep linking / sharing / bookmarking

App freezes are less common (on network access) and easier to manage when they happen - obviously this is anecdotal and not universal.

Re: Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing and collaborative editing. Being able to coordinate some process via a shared spreadsheet in a browser is efficient and resolves all issues of conflicting versions. Think of an overview of who is going to the office on which days this week (useful in times of working from home due to Corona). Responsiveness is not the primary concern here: good enough is fine for most purposes. This is not a replacement for a…

Interesting to note that cloud storage and realtime collaboration isn’t 100% tied to a browser-based interface though. Even though many existing apps work like that, there are desktop clients for a bunch of cloud-native SaaS (and even though some of those are Electron).

> resolves all issues of conflicting versions.

But isn't a problem in the browser, because you are always on the same version.

Re: Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

#59

I will keep saying this every single time some one gets this wrong (which is at least 49 times out of 50): the only way to handle scrolling properly on the web is for your scroll events to fall onto a real scrollable area, and to observe the effect it has (e.g. apply the scroll position to what you’re rendering with). This can be tricky to achieve well when you have dynamic content that the mouse needs to be able to…

Do you happen to have some links to resources I could read a bit more about it?

Re: Luckysheet, an open-source spreadsheet

#60

I still cannot wrap my head around why so many folks want to use such applications in a web browser. For me, web browser applications never reach the responsiveness and ease of use of well crafted desktop applications written in any decent systems programming language or even interpreted languages (not speaking of Javascript). Maybe I am getting old, but having the browser as a platform for programs is huge setback f…

Just before I even start,I want to mention that I'm a fan of MS Office and don't really like Google Sheets ( it's like a toy to me). Having written this,I still do believe that there are millions of people out there for whom browser based spreadsheet application is all they really need. Those aren't people doing tens of thousands of rows manipulations from database extracts.Those are the people who'd have a simple file and do simple things with it. I see a lot of consultants working with it: they create UAT stories,share with multiple users on the client side and everybody knows what's going on.
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