Spreadsheet Tips

Put Your Spreadsheet on a Company Web Page

I have a simple worksheet that I'd like to display on my company's Web site. Site visitors could enter values into the input cells, and the worksheet's formulas would calculate and display the result (a price estimate). I'm not talking about a fancy order-taking system, just a way to provide spreadsheet interactivity over the Web. Any suggestions?

Robert Awkins, Corona, California

Why not simply make your worksheet available for downloading from the company's Web page or FTP site? Visitors might prefer to use it offline. For maximum compatibility, make the file available in Lotus wk1 format or Excel 4 format.

All other options currently involve some programming or special software tools. If you want a truly interactive online worksheet, you can pursue a number of approaches. The traditional one is to use HTML forms, with text boxes for input. The user enters data and clicks a Submit button. The data goes to the server, where it's processed (usually by a CGI program), and the user receives the results as a new HTML document. Not exactly instant gratification, but it works fairly quickly. You have to do some programming, however.

If all your customers use browsers that support Java (Netscape Navigator version 3, Netscape Communicator, or Internet Explorer 3 or later), you can write JavaScript code to process the user's entries and display the results. Since the calculations occur on the client side, data doesn't have to be sent to and from the server, making this option more efficient than a CGI program.

Several products automate this process to provide slick spreadsheet access in a Web page. Visual Components, for example, offers Formula One (an ActiveX control that works with Internet Explorer) and Formula One/Net (a Navigator plug-in).

For a more general solution, consider the Visual Numerics SmartTable. It converts Excel spreadsheets into Java applets, which work on both Explorer and Navigator (see FIGURE 1).

SUMMARY

Formula One--Formula One/Net $199 list--free Visual Components 800/771-1645 www.visualcomp.com

SUMMARY

SmartTable $149 list Numerics 800/364-8880 www.vni.com