In this chapter, we have explored some of the ways to slice and dice the tables on our sites, reconfiguring them into beautiful and functional containers for our data. We have covered sorting data in tables, using different kinds of data (words, numbers, dates) as sort keys along with paginating tables into easily-viewed chunks. We have learned sophisticated row striping techniques and JavaScript-powered tooltips. We have also walked through expanding and collapsing as well as filtering and highlighting of rows that match the given criteria.

We’ve even touched briefly on some quite advanced topics, such as sorting and paging with server-side code and AJAX techniques, dynamically calculating page coordinates for elements, and writing a jQuery plug-in.

As we have seen, properly semantic HTML tables wrap a great deal of subtlety and complexity in a small package. Fortunately, jQuery can help us easily tame these creatures, allowing the full power of tabular data to come to the surface...