Pop-up free-form text entry window--How to?

[jsteph]

Hi all,
I have an html table that displays and updates data from a sql-server database.

One of the fields is a free-form data entry field. In the html table there is only room to show what you'd expect in a typical Excel-size cell. I don't want to go to a separate 'single-record-per-page' data entry page, it will remain tablular--looking just like an Excel sheet, but I just the user to be able to mouse-over or otherwise activate that cell so a pop-up window comes up and the user has a larger area in which to enter data.

One of my requirements here is that this is *not* to be a new page an there is to be no page-reload--it must all happen in script at the client browser.

I have so far been able to get this page to do everything I need including updates with no page reload, and this latest request for a new field with larger amount of freeform data is the reason for this new functionality.
Thanks,
--Jim

 

[southbeach]

Are you using AJAX or some sort of server side scripting? Without sample code of what you have it is hard to suggest a solution since whatever one suggest may not be suitable for your current environment or code structure.

That said, here is an idea:
1) Have a hidden field to store this information on each row
2) Create a hidden division (layer) with a form of its own
3) The submit of this form should simply call a JS function to populate the hidden field associated to the chosen row

Hope this helps!


--
SouthBeach
The good thing about not knowing is the opportunity to learn - Yours truly, 2008.

 

[jsteph]

Southbeach,
I'm using the xmlhttprequest, which I believe falls under the AJAX umbrella. I'm not doing anything much more fancy than that. I build the html table on the server via asp code looping through a meta-data table with database-field information to build the html table, then the database table itself to populate the cells with data.

All of this was fine when the users used it like a spreadsheet--they'd move off a row and the update would happen without a blink, but now they want this huge free-form text field and it's just not feasible to enter data in a single-line cell.

So I'll try your suggestion, it sounds pretty workable.
--Jim