It seems like the server would have to know the size of the user agent viewport in order to render the prioritized columns or the stacked columns. The ClientDescriptor class doesn't currently provide this information; it only tells whether it's a mobile (handheld) device, a tablet or desktop. One option would be to assume default viewport sizes for the different device categories or investigating the possibility of including the viewport dimensions in the ClientDescriptor class.

r46136: added support for responsive column display, via the 'displayPriority' attribute in ace:column.

This improvement is based on jQuery Mobile's Column Priorities, with some added tweaks to adjust to ace:dataTable, like removing the "width:100%;" styling when the viewport width matches the width for priority 6.

Some guidelines had to be established to make use of this feature in conjunction with other ace:dataTable features.

In the case of column stacking, the top ace:column in a stack dictates the display priority level for that column in the client side.

In the case of multi-row headers, parent columns need to have their own display priority specified, which should match that of the child with the highest priority, otherwise the parent column won't be hidden when all its children are hidden. I tried to do this automatically, but given the way the multi-row headers are processed and iterated over, it's very complicated to access the parent column to modify its priority.

Verified ICEfaces 4 trunk r46143. Test apps ICE-10800-1.jsf, ICE-10800-2.jsf added to:
http://dev.icesoft.com/svn/repo/qa/trunk/Regression-Icefaces4/Sparkle/Nightly/dataTable.
Tested with Chrome 46, FF 34, IE 11,10, 9, iphone 4s, ipad ios8, acer 10 inch tablet and android 6.0 on google nexus 5 phone.

Re-opened as the current implementation seems to not be considering the impact on readability that various screen DPIs can have. For example, a 21" 1080p screen is fine to show all cols, but the same 1080p resolution on a 5" phone screen would only want to show P1 or P2 max cols for legibility.

Note that support for:

2. Automatic column-stacking. Columns are automatically stacked with their immediate neighbours as deep as required to fit them all in the available dataTable width. This could leverage the existing column-stacking support, but basically defines the stacks automatically based on the column and dataTable widths.

...has been moved to ICE-10832.

r46158: removed previous fix to remove width:100% from the table, which won't be necessary once the appropriate viewport meta tag is included on the page

r46163: added note to TLD documentation about the need to use mobi:deviceResource for the responsive column display feature to work correctly on mobile devices.

Verified ICEfaces 4 trunk r46163 using iphone 5, ipad ios 8, android 6 phone, Chrome 45, FF 34, IE 11, 10.