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Expected behavior. Sorting a paging table column

When a user views the dumped table and asks to sort it by a specific column, which page is displayed?

Is there a standard expected behavior for this scenario? I can imagine several possible results, but I want to know if there is a standard.

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Do you mean which page to show among the n pages in the table? There are no good options. Any opportunity is likely to be disorienting and frustrating for the user precisely because there is no standard and there is no particularly compelling reason to choose one option over the other. If you were testing users, I doubt they will have consistent expectations. Even the same user can expect different things at different times. Paged tables also provide relatively weak feedback on the current location in the table, making it difficult for users to figure out where they are after sorting whatever option you use. Useful sorting is one of the reasons paged tables are inferior to scrollable tables.

Opportunities:

  • If you have a way to show the selected or focused element (row) in the current table, you can go to any page that this element is on, assuming that users have decided to sort at that moment in order to see other details like the detail that they look at. This is consistent with some scrolling table implementations. However, most tables web applications that are loaded do not support item selection.

  • You can show the i-th page where users are included when they are sorted (for example, if they are on the third page when sorted, show the third page in the new sort order). This is consistent with some other scrollable table implementations. It also supports the case where the table is almost correctly sorted (for example, in the Sent Date field when a receive date is required). Displaying the i-th page puts users on the "same page" as before. This is, however, not the most common use case, and users are more likely to feel like they've been thrown onto a random page given poor feedback. This setting is likely to cause the most confusion.

  • You can show the first page in a new sort order. Depending on your needs, perhaps most of the time when a user is sorting a table, users are interested in the items with the highest or lowest value for the attribute they have sorted. By showing the first page, the chances that you are right can approach 50%. Its least disorienting because the user feels like they are back at their psychic anchor point - at the beginning. On the other hand, users can be frustrated if they feel like they are starting to "get started." Overall, this is probably your best bet.



Typically, after sorting, users want to navigate to elements with a specific attribute value that they have sorted. It is difficult with a paged table because paging is slow and users don't know which page number corresponds to which value. You can tag links for pages with a range of values ​​found on them, but that can consume a lot of real estate. At the very least, you should always link to the first and last page of the spreadsheet, however many pages are there so users can get the highest and lowest value items in one click.

Alternatively, consider supporting filtering rather than sorting to achieve the same goal. Depending on your user task, this can work much better and be less confusing and time consuming.

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Michael Zuschlag's answer is very good, but I think that cases # 1 and # 2 that he presents are really unusual, and it might be more confusing than helpful.

In my opinion, you should always show the first page in the new sort order . If the user has selected an item, they usually don't want to sort anything because they've already found what they were looking for.

If you want to provide a sorting list to the list, usually you want to see the real, complete order.



A classic script could be a torrent site:

  • I am searching for a torrent by typing some keywords.

  • After searching, I have an unordered list, 50 items per page.

  • I go to the second page.

  • Now I think it is better to sort the results by starting with the item with the most planters and clicking on the seed column header.

I expect to see the item with the most planters after step 4, so after sorting you should show me the first page. And I think this is true for any sorting situation.

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First of all, AMEN to the previous answer (and +1) Second, just for real examples of what users are familiar with and can expect, Yahoo Mail does # 3 (going to page 1 after sorting). Many other websites do this as well.

My personal recommendation - if possible - would be # 1 above (let's go to the page containing the currently selected item). Make sure STILL is selected.

It is both somewhat intuitive, not very expected, and most useful in cases where the user cares about what is going on. Also, option # 3 (go to first page) is only 1 click for the user if your paging controls include Go to Page 1, whereas as noted in the previous answer, doing the first page makes it difficult and time-consuming for users who wanted to stay with the current item.

I definitely support the idea of ​​"add filtering" if possible - I find myself using Excel for> 50% of working with tables / lists created from any application / website thanks to its exceptional combination of filtering and sorting. Perhaps YUI has a decent filterable table element assuming your UI is HTML?

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