I've been using the Javascript jQuery library to keep browser work in the browser instead of doing post-backs on the server for things like column sorts and DOM manipulations. Some folks like Script.aculo.us, Yahoo's UI libraries, etc. I like jQuery for it's plugins to avoid larger JS libraries and the ability to upgrade old static HTML pages to Web 2.0'ish with minimal efforts.
When I saw your Top 100, I thought it would be nice to sort the columns in page on Authors or Distribution for additional abuser insight
;-). (I did this with Firebug in Firefox.)
For example, there's a recent article in Linux Journal (03/09, p.18, At The Forge - jQuery Plugins) that brings to light one such plug-in (DataTable) I use when dealing with HTML tables of less than a couple thousand rows. If I have an HTML table, static or rendered, adding the following will make all columns sortable:
<html>
<head>
<title>example</title>
<!-- add these script lines-->
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"
/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.dataTables.js"
/>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function () {
$('#table-id').dataTable();
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<!-- makes sure the table has a ID defined in the DOM -->
<table id="table-id">
<thead><tr><th>Col1</th><th>Col2</th><th>Col3</th><th>Col4</th></tr></thead>
<tbody>
<tr><td>a1</td><td>a2</td><td>a3</td><td>a4</td></tr>
<tr><td>b1</td><td>b2</td><td>b3</td><td>b4</td></tr>
<tr><td>c1</td><td>c2</td><td>c3</td><td>c4</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
<html>
You should then have an in browser sortable table without any post-back processing. Again, fairly large tables in browser will take longer when sorting.
I hope this quick bit tip helps out many.
Later, Mark S.
