Tree controls

[paulb]

I don't like em! They are difficult to navigate; you have to click on a little + button to expand one element, which usually results in a big list of child elements filling the viewing area and pushing all other elements out of view. They dont show much information; if you have elements with lots of properties you can only show one of these to the user, usually a text string like a description or name, unlike the list control where you can add as many columns as needed to show all properties. Editing is confusing; if an element is selected and I click on a "New" button what is being added - a child or a sibling element? Tree controls just take up a lot of screen space that could be better utilised, but what is the alternative when you have naturally heirarchical data?

[ColinDavies]

paulb wrote: but what is the alternative when you have naturally heirarchical data? Damm. I read your post agreeing with you all the way, and I expected to see an alternative offered. Damm. Regardz Colin J Davies

Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin

I'm guessing the concept of a 2 hour movie showing two guys eating a meal and talking struck them as 'foreign' Rob Manderson wrote:

[Stephane Rodriguez]

paulb wrote: you have to click on a little + button to expand one element auto-expand, based on timing (try it with drag&drop in Windows explorer). paulb wrote: results in a big list of child elements filling the viewing area I agree, even though that's up to you to come up with an owner drawn implementation based on chunks of children (along with a More button), instead of all children. paulb wrote: unlike the list control where you can add as many columns multi-column tree control is the answer. There is one on Cp. paulb wrote: Tree controls just take up a lot of screen space that could be better utilised, but what is the alternative when you have naturally heirarchical data? I believe you have forgotten to mention sorting capabilities, and stuff like that (top ten, filters, ...). Business Intelligence tools (BO, cognos, ...) have a long history of showing cube data using trees.