[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #32395: Truncation is not a good strategy for responsive list tables

[WordPress Trac]

#32395: Truncation is not a good strategy for responsive list tables
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 Reporter:  helen              |      Owner:
     Type:  task (blessed)     |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal             |  Milestone:  4.3
Component:  Administration     |    Version:  3.8
 Severity:  normal             |   Keywords:
  Focuses:  ui, accessibility  |
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 Our current strategy for dealing with list tables on narrow screens is to
 just chop off columns. This is terrible for a number of reasons:

 * We use CSS and column classes (that are based on the column name) to
 hide things at fairy arbitrary breakpoints that have nothing to do with
 the sizes of the columns. The intent is not easily understood and is not
 contextual to the type of content being displayed in the list table in the
 first place, leading to conflicts between different list tables. This also
 makes for unpleasant CSS that is difficult to maintain.
 * If we presume that a significant percentage of narrow-screened browser
 usage is also on limited data plans, it is silly that we're loading all
 this markup that goes for nothing, and require another page load to see
 information that the user may need to make a decision as to what to do
 next.
 * Custom columns get no consideration whatsoever, leading to particularly
 poor list tables outside of the built-in ones.

 Related:
 * [ticket:25408 #25408: Ability to specify that a list table column is
 "primary"] - this is also important here, as this becomes the column that
 is always shown
 * [ticket:26302 #26302:  Specify display priority for list table columns]
 - likely a wontfix if we get rid of the truncation strategy

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/32395>
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