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Sunday, August 3, 2014

Visualizing Data on the Web

Here's a non-NDA tidbit from the Microsoft MVP Summit - I think you'll find it quite useful.  I'm going to go through my old posts to see if I can find places to retrofit with this cool little extra.  If I can't find any, I'll probably try to contrive a few new posts (yes, they've been lacking too) to demonstrate the utility of it.
There are times when you include HTML tables in your webpages or blog posts.  If one of your visitors wants to capture that information, there are a couple of options available to them (and you).  First, they can select, then paste the data into Excel.  This assumes they have Excel locally - which isn't always a roadblock because they can fire up an Excel sheet in their free OneDrive account.  A second option is for you to provide that data in an Excel spreadsheet, and place a download link somewhere on your page.
I think we can all agree that copy and paste isn't the best experience for your visitors.  We can also surely agree that it's a nuisance to have to duplicate the data, save it in a spreadsheet on your own OneDrive, set up a public link, etc...
What's easier than all that, and delivers a surprisingly excellent interface for exploring the data?  It's what the Excel team calls "Excel Interactive View".  I have no doubt that the first time you click on the button below, you'll be as shocked (pleasantly) as I was when I saw it first.  Don't take my word for it, explore yourself:

YearMain Conference AttendeesPrecon AttendeesSource
201238941717http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20121107006865/en/PASS-Summit-2012-Kicks-Record-5600-Registrations
201134921616http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2011/Live/News/Partner25.aspx
20102814993http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101109005927/en/PASS-Summit-2010-Opens-Record-Registrations
20092200798http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/steve_jones/2009/11/03/pass-summit-2009-wayne-snyder/

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