Websites using Tablesorter

Okay, let s break down tablesorter, covering its overview, revenue (or lack thereof), alternatives, pricing, and customer care.

Tablesorter Overview

Tablesorter is a free and open-source jQuery plugin that enhances standard HTML tables, making them more interactive and user-friendly. It allows you to add the following features to your tables:

• Sortable Columns: Users can click on column headers to sort data in ascending or descending order. This is the core functionality of tablesorter.
• Pagination: Break down large tables into smaller, more manageable pages.
• Filters: Allow users to filter data based on specific criteria within columns.
• Themeability: Customize the visual appearance of the table to match your website s design using CSS.
• Extensibility: Add custom parsers and widgets to tailor the functionality to specific data types and needs.
• Lightweight & Fast: Designed to be performant, even with large datasets.
• Browser Compatibility: Supports major modern browsers.

Key Characteristics:

• jQuery Plugin: It relies on the jQuery JavaScript library. This is an important consideration, as your project needs to have jQuery included.
• Client-Side Processing: Tablesorter operates entirely within the user s browser. All sorting, filtering, and pagination are done on the client-side, meaning it doesn t involve making server requests every time you interact with the table.
• Community-Driven: It s actively maintained by a community of developers.

Revenue

Since Tablesorter is an open-source project and a jQuery plugin, it does not generate direct revenue. It s available for free under a permissive license (typically MIT or similar). The developers and contributors do not sell licenses or subscriptions to it.

How the project is maintained if it doesn t have revenue:

• Community Contributions: Development is driven by the community through code contributions, bug reports, documentation, and feature requests.
• Personal Time: Maintainers often contribute their time and skills to support and improve the library.
• Donations (rare): Some open-source projects might have donation links. However, tablesorter seems to have a limited donation model.

Alternatives

Here are some popular alternatives to Tablesorter, categorized by type:

1. Other jQuery Plugins:

• DataTables: A very powerful and feature-rich jQuery plugin. It offers a lot of similar functionality to tablesorter, but is generally considered more powerful and customizable (and might be more complex to set up). It also has a paid Editor feature for adding inline editing.
• FooTable: Another solid jQuery plugin, often praised for its responsive design and handling of mobile.
• jTable: A Jquery plugin for creating AJAX based CRUD table.

2. Vanilla JavaScript (No jQuery required):

• Tabulator: A highly versatile and feature-rich table library written in plain JavaScript. Known for handling large datasets well and having an extensive API.
• Handsontable: A spreadsheet-like grid component written in plain JavaScript. It s excellent if you need editing or Excel-like features in your tables.
• Ag-Grid: A powerful and enterprise-grade JavaScript grid library with advanced filtering, grouping, and charting features. It is available in a Community and Enterprise version.

3. React-Specific Options:

• React Table: A headless table component for React, providing flexibility in building custom tables with the necessary functionality.
• Material UI Data Grid: A feature-rich data grid component from the Material UI component library for React apps.

4. Vue.js-Specific Options:

• Vuetable: A comprehensive table component for Vue.js projects.
• Vue Good Table: Another lightweight and flexible table component for Vue.js.

When to choose Tablesorter:

• If you are already using jQuery in your project and want to add simple table sorting and pagination quickly.
• You want a small, lightweight library.
• You want a free, open-source solution with a good track record.

When to choose an alternative:

• You do not want to rely on jQuery.
• You need advanced features beyond sorting, filtering and basic pagination.
• You need a solution optimized for very large datasets (consider Tabulator or Ag-Grid).
• You need specific framework integration (e.g., React or Vue.js).
• You need enterprise support.

Pricing

As mentioned before, Tablesorter is free and open-source. There are no licensing fees or subscriptions. You are free to use it in personal and commercial projects.

Customer Care Details

Tablesorter does not have traditional customer care in the sense of a commercial product with dedicated support teams. Here s how support is typically handled:

• GitHub Repository:
  • Issue Tracker: This is the primary place for reporting bugs, requesting features, and asking questions. You can search for existing issues to see if your problem has already been addressed.
  • Pull Requests: If you have a fix or improvement, you can submit a pull request for review.
• Community Forums: Online forums and communities (e.g., Stack Overflow) might have threads dedicated to tablesorter. You can search these for answers or ask for help.
• Documentation: The official tablesorter documentation should be your first point of reference for understanding how to use the plugin. However, it can sometimes be a bit outdated or incomplete.
• No Dedicated Support Team: You will generally not have access to direct email or phone support.

Important Note: Because tablesorter is maintained by volunteers, expect response times to be variable and dependent on the available time of contributors.

In summary:

Tablesorter is a good, free option for adding basic table enhancements to your project if you already use jQuery. However, if you need advanced features, want to avoid jQuery, or need more comprehensive support, consider one of the alternatives.

Let me know if you have any other questions!