Managing Column Width in Thin Tables and Crosstabs

BI Beans thin tables and crosstabs present data in HTML tables. HTML browsers size table columns based on the contents of the cells in each column. In BI Beans thin tables and crosstabs, you can set properties to affect how the columns are sized.

Approximating Java-client column sizes

If you use JDeveloper to create views that you want to use in your HTML-client application, you can manually resize rows and columns in the Java-client tables and crosstabs. Row sizes are ignored in a thin table or crosstab. Also, by default, column sizes that you specify in a Java-client table or crosstab are ignored when you load them as thin tables or crosstabs.

To have a ThinGridView approximate the column sizes that you set in the Java-client GridView, call the setHTMLColumnSizing method of the ThinGridView, and pass oracle.dss.gridView.GridViewCommon.RELATIVE_COLUMN_SIZING as the parameter value. This causes the ThinGridView to calculate the percentage of the visible columns that each column should take, and to set the percentage values on the HTML table in which the data appears.

Setting minimum and maximum cell widths

You can also specify minimum and maximum widths for columns by setting the CellMinWidth and CellMaxWidth properties of the ThinGridView. When the ThinGridView sets the relative column sizes, it respects these settings.

Setting the width of the HTML table

You can also set the width of the HTML table in which the ThinGridView displays data. You can set the width as a number of pixels, or as a percentage of the page in which the table appears. To set the width of the HTML table, call the setHTMLTableWidth of the ThinGridView.

Effect of content size on column size

If the content that appears in a table cell will not fit in a size that you have set, then most browsers ignore any special setting, to ensure that the table cell content appears fully. In this case, you can adjust the size of the font or enable word wrapping to change the shape or size of the cell content.

To change the font size, call the setFontSize method of the ViewStyle that governs the cell format.

To enable word wrapping, call the setWordWrapEnabled method of the ViewStyle.