Sort, Filter, Manage Tables In Firefox With TableTools2

Having to work with tables in a web browser is not the most pleasant experience, unless you are on a site like Google Docs that offers more than just the ability to copy table cell data into other programs. Tables are displayed using the HTML table tag or by formatting elements with the help of CSS. Regardless of the way they are presented, there is not much that you can do with tables on a website directly.

Most users who need table data will probably copy all of it into a spreadsheet to work with it in there. You can either try and copy the data directly or use specialized browser extensions like Table 2 Clipboard for the Firefox web browser for that.

If you want to do more than that, you need a specialized browser extension like TableTools2 for Firefox, which adds many different table management options to the browser.

It allows users to copy, sort, search, filter, rearrange, combine and compare HTML tables and create charts using their data.

When it comes to sorting, it supports not only single-column sorts but also multi-column sorts. It comes with automatic and pre-configured sorting options as well as user defined sorting options.

Table data can be transformed into various charts with just a few clicks. The extension supports scatter, pie, line or frequency charts among others that are generated and displayed directly in the browser.

Users who work with large tables in the browser will like the searching options. TableTools2 supports regular expressions for advanced searches, custom filters to find results in a specified range and standard searches that match the entered values.

Take a look at the following video, it demonstrates some of the extension’s capabilities.

One of the interesting features of TableTools2 is the ability to display drop down filters for each table column. This way you can select specific table values that you want displayed. The extension hides all other table rows afterwards and displays additional information about the specific row and its columns on the same page.

The extension offers additional features that come in handy. From hiding columns of a table to restricting range of data rows to a full set of keyboard shortcuts for even faster access to the extension’s feature set.

You can install the table management add-on for Firefox over at Mozilla. The page offers detailed information about the add-on. Additional information and table examples are available on the developer’s own homepage.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Friday November 11, 2011 -
Tags:charts, copy tables, firefox add-ons, tables

Responses so far:

1. Mingyi says:

   November 24, 2011 at 1:51 am

   Thanks for the nice summary! Much appreciated!

   I also want to note that TableTools2 copies table to not just Excel properly, but also to your email with nicely justified columns, and one can copy rows/columns/cells. I don’t see any other FF addons matching all TT2′s copying features.

   Reply