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In some applications, dates can be entered manually as a date, or also as year/week (where we then calculate the first date of this week). We also use this for periods as well (year/period). How would you align the values in a grid? And how should header labels be aligned then? We also have combinations like From Year/week and To year/week. How would you show these (separate fields or like format YYYYWW)? |
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What is it that the users are looking for? Are they trying to determine differences / similarities, missing data, specific data? And are they looking for differences in the WW or the YYYY? @Benny suggested right aligning the dates, but I have to disagree with that. The example given is not easily scannable. Rows 4 and 6 carry (approx) the same visual weight, but they couldn't be further apart in value. Rows 4 and 5 are the same date, but row 5 is holding more visual weight due to its length. This works in spreadsheets for numerical values, because left-aligned values with enough zeros like 1 million and 10 million look pretty similar. It isn't until they are right aligned that we can easily visualize the numeric differences. So, figure out the goal of the user and craft your grid to aid in that. Are they looking for dates without a WW value? Are they looking for dates that fall within a range? Determining the goal may answer the question of alignment and how many cols to use. |
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Probably you'd be safe if you follow the conventions present on both Google Drive Spreadsheet and SkyDrive Excel Web App. Both use right-alignment on any value format, which you could do to (and if needed reference Google Drive Spreadsheet and SkyDrive Excel Web Apps).
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