(Just a heads up, I wrote this on an iPhone so it might not look great, sorry about that)
I'm building an online database creator (think Dabbledb, Zoho creator, etc)
When you create a database like these tools let you do, if you have a lot of columns then the table won't be able to fit on the screen. What most of these services do is show a horizontal scrollbar.
I thought of an alternative idea for my new service. Instead of showing all the columns on one page with a horizontal scrollbar, I would show only say 5 columns on the listing page. Then when you clicked the row it would show all of the columns on a new page.
On the Create Database page, I would lets users sort their columns, and the 5 columns that were sorted the highest would be the 5 that were shown on the listing page.
Some benefits of this approach:
No horizontal scrollbars (I honestly think they're ugly and a bad solution)
It seems simple (at least to me. That's why I wanted other peoples opinions) I'm trying to market it as a simpler database so lower information density is key!
But is this a good approach from a UX standpoint? I'd love to hear others opinions on this.
Or is there a better solution?
Thanks for all input!