Show HN: Datagridxl2.js – Fast Excel-like data table library

Post by ale42 » Wed, Apr 06, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

robbiejs wrote: post #58

ale42 wrote: post #7

Very nice! Just, I'm not sure that users who stick to Excel despite a web app do so just because of Excel's interface... sometimes it is because it is much easier to work with files than with web sites. And sometimes the way to get to the web app is the thing destroying the UX (slowly responding servers, weird login processes, etc.)

Ah yes I see what you mean. I used to work for a fintech startup and our sales team had a hard time finding customers for the product that we're building. These customers were impressed by the web app that we've made, but "we don't see a reason to use your products, we are used to Excel and we like Excel". So we decided to create a page in our web app that looked like Excel. I initially used Handsontable for this pag…

Post by mholt » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

eitland wrote: post #15

bklyn11201 wrote: post #3

The performance here is amazing. Well done! I'm desperately searching for a way to replace old Handsontable (before they closed source), but the license here for DataGrid XL makes it impossible to easily bring into a large FOSS project. Some ideas for licensing: dual license MIT and commercial. Feed advanced features and support into the commercial while keeping the MIT version fast, performant, extendable.

I think it was handsontable I burned myself on: got client to sponsor/pay for support for a nice open source tool and shortly after they went closed source. Same with caddy, except that time it was my money. Some times I wonder if I should avoid giving money to open source projects because it seems to trigger the idea that one can make a whole lot of more money by selling out.

Post by robbiejs » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

robbiejs wrote: post #104

polskibus wrote: post #102

Have you considered writing the component using canvas? The fastest full featured grids I encountered, incl. google sheets, are based on canvas.

Yes I have considered canvas. Parts of the grid are canvas (cell background colors). I chose DOM for a bunch or reasons: natural font scaling was a big thing (easy on the eyes even if zoomed in all the way) and another big thing was that working with canvas was difficult for me, even workin with a canvas you would have to apply lots of tricks in order to get the performance.

Post by mclbdn » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 11:40 PM UTC