I'm dealing with a data table with a large number of columns and rows. Because there are so many columns, I'm thinking of putting in something that scrolls horizontally and vertically while fixing the first column which has the row title. Now the user would like to quickly edit information on this table.
Inline edit seems to be the way to go, but how should this be handled so it's quick for the user to edit info on a line and to edit specific fields?
I've looked at:
Per Row
User clicks anywhere in the row and the entire row is editable. The positioning of the "Save" button seems very far away if user was only editing a single field. The horizontal scrolling of the table also makes it awkward to place the buttons (fixed it to screen?).
Per Cell
User clicks to edit a specific cell. The action buttons are now right beside the field. From hallway tests, people say it's not clear that the grid supports keyboard tabbing to quickly move between fields. This is much more apparent with "per row" edit.
Form Style
User clicks on the edit button and an edit form shows up below. I'm not sure this is the right approach though because the user now needs to re-orientate themselves to the fields because of the layout switch. Which may impact speed of editing.
Which approach, or something else is better to support quick row and specific field edits?