The rules of tables on a website are as predictable as gravity.

As soon as you put one on a page, a client will ask to:

1. Enable column sorting. Seeing the data isn’t enough; they need to see it in order.
2. Add pagination. The initial 25 rows were fine for the POC, but now you realize it doesn’t work with 10,000.
3. Pick filters on all columns. “Only the validated records from Belgium”
4. Implement a universal search. “I want to be able to find ‘Martin’ no matter which column he’s in.”
5. Allow multi-column sorting. Because what is funnier than sorting on one column? Sorting on multiple columns.
6. Provide a “Download All” button. They need the raw data and you will hope to get away with CSV exports.
7. Export to Excel, not CSV. CSV is too hard to manipulate!
8. Ensure that filters are applying to the Excel downloads. Nobody wants to do all that filtering twice.
9. Improve the Excel formatting. Bold headers, cell borders, outliers in red.

Don’t even try to resist, it’s written in advance.

A screenshot of IASO, a product that I’m working on