[thelist] Best Practices For Online Report Formatting
Burhan Khalid
thelist at meidomus.com
Tue May 17 05:41:27 CDT 2005
Hello Everyone:
I'm looking for any tools, pointers, stylesheets, etc. for formatting
reports for both online viewing and printing. The reports I'm talking
about are not very complex -- user listings, profit/loss, sales,
inventory, etc.
I can display the reports in a crude way (as simple tables with
alternating color rows). Is there a best/recommended way to format
these reports? Also, what are the recommendations for interactivity? As
an example, in my sales report, each product that is listed is linked to
its desciption/meta information -- each supplier is linked to their
record, etc. I have a feeling that this is not the correct way to do
things, but since I'm only a developer I don't know quite how to fix it.
Specifically for summary reports, is it recommended to have a link
for each period report (quarterly, yearly, monthly) or just have a link
for a report, then allow the user to pick the period? Currently I have
a menu Reports structured as:
Reports
-> Registered Users
-> Sales (Aggregates)
-> Sold By Supplier
-> Sold By Category
-> Sold By Campaign
-> Sales (Monthly)
-> Sold By Supplier
-> Sold By Category
-> Sold By Campaign
-> Sales (Yearly)
-> Sold By Supplier
-> Sold By Category
-> Sold By Campaign
The client is happy with the menu, but my fear is that if the amount
of reports increases, this menu is going to get crazy and difficult to
navigate.
Looking forward to any suggestions.
Regards,
Burhan
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