It seems that sometime last week the formatting for tables on twiki.org changed. Prior to that time, tables were shown with outlines around the table and each cell. Now they are shown with colored backgrounds (for the heading) and alternate lines shaded.

While this generally looks better, there are two cases where it is not better (IMHO):

• For people who use a browser like IE with the Internet Options -> Accessibility -> Ignore colors specified on Web pages option set. (I have the same problem in Mozilla, but I'm not at my Linux box so I can't tell you the option I specified.)
• For printing -- in general the heading text is lighter (less legible) and the lack of outlines around the table and each cell makes data more difficult to "associate" (which data is on the same row??)

Aside: The change does not affect the "forms" table.

Questions:

• Was this an intentional or an accidental change?
• Can it be set on a web by web basis (<Webname>WebPreferences??)
• Can the print template be set up to use the outlines?

-- RandyKramer - 21 Apr 2003

I changed the table look in the TablePlugin settings. The blue headings with yellow text give tables a corporate look (corporate look for skin is pending). Example:

Region: (help)	Sales:
Northeast	320
Northwest	580
South	240
Europe	610
Asia	220
Total:	1970

There are some known issues with the new table look, which is an opportunity to improve things:

• Printing: Some browsers like IE do not print background colors by default (although you can change that in the browser settings). This is not an issue at TWiki.org, content does not gets printed often.
• Accessability: As Randy points out, if you set the browser to ignore colors it is difficult to see the borders between cells.
• Links: Links in table headings are difficult to see on the blue background. This should be fixed so that links are visible in all cases.
• Arrows: The table sorting arrows are difficult to see for the same reasons.

It also shows another parts that needs to be addressed:

• Attached forms do not get rendered according to the TablePlugin settings.

-- PeterThoeny - 22 Apr 2003

Peter, thanks for the information!

I made some changes to Wikilearn that temporarily, at least, solves my problem. (Primarily, I set tableborder="1", but I experimented a little with the cellspacing and cellborder settings.)

It's been a long time since I read the documentation, but I didn't recall that the global settings for a plugin are in the Plugins web.

Maybe eventually there should be a way to specify one table format for printing and a different one for viewing. (Does TWiki have a way of knowing what the browser settings are, to provide a different format if the Internet Options -> Accessibility -> Ignore colors specified on Web pages option is set?)

Two other things re printing:

• Not everyone has a color printer
• Even those who do have a color printer may not like "wasting" colored ink for a table background

-- RandyKramer - 22 Apr 2003

Unfortunately, if a table heading contains a link you wind up with dark-blue on darker-blue or black, which (at least on my monitor) is the corporate look at Unreadability, Inc. and Eyestrain, LLC.

-- DaleBrayden - 22 Apr 2003

Well said And don't forget this corporate rule: when creating mystery meat navigation, use only newest, fanciest technology to show off. Blue on dark-blue just does not count
Seriously: I prefer shading over a grid, which looks really oldfashioned mosaicish (to me). But until the TablePlugin fixes this problem (probably using CSS classes in a span or such), the table background colours must stick to the same rules as %WEBBGCOLOR%. Actually, WEBBGCOLOR is a nice choice: it reinforces the web identity and is in line with search headers and similar.

Ad form table: I'll post a simple patch to RenderFormAsRegularTable.

-- PeterKlausner - 23 Apr 2003

Figure: screenshot of table on stock Windoze NS7

Finally posted the promised patch...

BTW: the right hand side screenshot shows the table from above as seen in NS7 on Win NT w/o any colour tweakings. It looks good, yes. Minor detail: can anybody read the link? I don't think this appeals to corporate users!
This should be really, really fast

1. fixed in the plugin, or
2. changed [temporarily] to sth. like %WEBBGCOLOR... (I favor the second, because however cool the new table colour scheme is for itself, it just doesn't match the other elements of the default skin. So rather than enhance the overall appearance, this just looks more random/inconsistent.)

-- PeterKlausner - 12 May 2003

Relying on defaults is a good way to get unreadable combinations, as your example shows all too (un)clearly. If you change one color away from a default, you should set all colors for the block - Bgcolor,Text,Link,VLink,Alink - instead of relying on defaults.

-- TomKagan - 12 May 2003

I tried to change the table header to %WEBBGCOLOR% but it does not work, the execution order of the variables is in a way that %WEBBGCOLOR% does not get expanded. This should be fixed as well.

Tom is right, the link color in table headings needs to be fixed. The correct way is to add a new parameter for that to the TablePlugin.

-- PeterThoeny - 13 May 2003

This is now fixed in the latest TablePlugin.

-- PeterThoeny - 25 May 2003