Create a simple database
I started by creating a database. I added a form and two fields: "Title" and "Author". Next I added some sample documents. Figure A shows these documents when viewed from the Notes Client.

FIGURE A


Here's a simple database contents viewed in Notes. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Here sorting is achieved by clicking on each column header. I will now show you how to reproduce this same functionality in the browser.

Create a Web view
I proceeded to create a view for the browser. I used multiple columns to make the code easier to follow but you could group all of the HTML into a single column if you prefer. Each column in my Web view is detailed below. The Column-1 formula is simple:

Set to sorted ascending and hidden because we don't want the browser to see it. The Column-2 formula has some table tags:

This defines the start of each table row. Note that I have given the row a "title" attribute. I use title attributes of the "tr" and "td" tags to give me access to the data that I want to sort on.

The Column-3 formula is where some of the hard work begins:

This is the first column of the HTML table. It displays the book titles as links. Note, that I use the "title" attribute of the "td" tag here just as I did for the "tr" tag above. For the table columns however I also use the "abbr" attribute to hold the value that I wish to sort by.

Column-4 formula adds a bit more: