I'm trying to design website using Google's material design guidelines. On desktop, my site is basically navigation drawer (on the left), header (app bar) and the content area. All what I want to display in content area is a data table with a lot of rows, while keeping table header always visible when scrolling. Every row is to be select-able by check-box and when that happens, action controls shall appear.
And this is where I'm struggling. Where to place the action controls when a row is selected? Placing them into app bar to the right is out of option - it could be too far away from check-box for user to see that something happened.
I could add header to the table (as Google suggests - https://www.google.com/design/spec/components/data-tables.html#data-tables-tables-within-cards) and when user selects a row, the header would display actions instead. However, I have a feeling that this would take up too much space when displayed on smartphone. Also, I believe that on smartphone, app bar is the place to put the action controls.
Please, I would welcome any idea how to approach this :-)