Visualizing Cross-Tab Tables with Column Sort

Just came across a report by Reuters on USA-China gap widens between respective internet giants. The report includes a text table. The caption says the table columns can be sorted. But it is a static image. (They retracted the table after I reported the issue.)

It picked my interest. I therefore created a Tableau version with column-wise horizontal bar charts and column sort. I would like to show that we can have a more visual way of displaying tables. And I still included a text mode just for the comparison. Or if the user wishes, he can switch between text and visual modes.

Feel free to download the workbook and look into the details.

The key steps in this design are:

1. Dual axis for each column to show both bars and numbers. This way both the company names and numbers are well aligned.
2. Use parameterized metric for column sorting.
3. Use parameter action for selecting the column sort. Each column header is a sheet. It includes a number as a dimension for assigning to the parameter.
4. Deselect the column header after clicking.

The deselect method is based on a technique introduced by Yuri Val. 

That's how we can visualize a cross-tab table with column sort.