I think you're better off with a custom component (perhaps implemented as an HBox of List controls). A DataGrid does indeed intend to show *rows* of data. You'll be fighting the component's basic design idea the whole way if you start with a DataGrid.
You should also consider the user interface impact of such a component: it's an intriguing approach to the problem and it could certainly work, but it's easy to create a usability train wreck when getting too adventurous in UI design. Make sure to test it with real users as much as possible. -- Maciek Sakrejda Truviso, Inc. http://www.truviso.com -----Original Message----- From: jiggy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Subject: [flexcoders] A Weird DataGrid Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:48:50 -0800 (PST) Hi, folks, I am trying to do something weird with datagrid, which will be described a bit later. Please let me have your insights about if it is the right direction or not. I would like to have a table about 30 rows by 19 columns, which will present information about cars. Each column represents an attribute (e.g., mpg, acceleration, price) of various cars, and each row (kind of) represent a car (e.g., civic, camry, accord, etc.). One thing strange about this table is that, all columns are sorted. It is different from the multi-sorting feature of AdvancedGrid. Let me show you an example. Cars | MPG | Price Accord | 10 mpg (of Civic) | $10000 (of Camry) Civic | 20 mpg (of Accord) | $20000 (of Civic) Camry | 30 mpg (of Camry) | $30000 (of Accord) Since all the columns (i.e., Cars, MPG, Price) are sorted, the rows are messed up. The first row contains the information about Accord, the MPG of Civic, and the price of Camry. In this representation, a row doesn't represent a specific car any more. So, what I am trying to do is when a person move a mouse cursor on a cell of Accord, all the cells related with Accord will be highlighted. In this way, a user will find out which cell belongs to Accord through highlights even though rows are messed up. While implementing this, I found that the underlying data structure does not seem to be well matched with this user interface. Each row is treated as the same element of a collection. Drawing is done line by line. However, as you can see, a row in this strange datagrid represents attributes of different elements. Due to this, highlights cannot be drawn line by line. It will highlights all over the places. What do you think? Should I build one from scratch? Or, using DataGrid will be fine for this? Regards, Ji Soo Yi -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/A-Weird-DataGrid-tp15701811p15701811.html Sent from the FlexCoders mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
