Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 04/05/07 20:12

Scripsit Martix:

> I'm using asp to display database date into a table. The problem I'm
> having is when one of the cells is empty. I'm not sure how to explain
> what it looks like

A URL is worth a thousand words.

> but it looks like the cells is missing.

I guess many people know what you are talking about, but the URL would be
useful for a different purpose too: for guessing what might be adequate
content for the empty cell.

Before deciding to use   (or the no-break character itself) as
suggested in the discussion - it's in most cases the best practical approach
_if_ you really want an empty cell -, consider _why_ the cell is empty.
Think about the user's view on it: I see an empty cell - what does it
indicate? The user might be puzzled.

In a data table, an empty cell might indicate lack of data (e.g., not
measured yet), or data that logically cannot exist, or no events (which
might better be presented using the digit zero or a dash), or data that
cannot be presented for privacy or other reasons. For each of them, some
non-blank characters might express the meaning better than an empty cell.
More on this (including some suggested notations), see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/emptycells.html

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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