Thesaurus Roamer in Flex
Try out this new thesaurus roamer, written in Adobe Flex using the Roamer component. And download the latest version of the Roamer/SpringGraph components (version 20061210, 208k).
I had some unexpected extra time available, so I wrote a thesaurus roamer reminiscent of the classic ThinkMap Visual Thesaurus. The data for the thesaurus comes from thesaurus.com, by way of (using the data mapper thesaurusreferencecom2. The UI is well, um, a springgraph. I’ve added a couple of new some ideas for presenting and navigating the history of items that you’ve visited. As usual, the source code is available by right-clicking.
The Roamer component is where the new history handling takes place: back/forward controls, a way to display the history in other components, and better control over how history items appear on the screen. The SpringGraph component now gives you a way to create different views for different kinds of items.
December 12th, 2006 at 4:41 am
Awesome - thanks for making the source code available. Great example of using the Roamer component.
December 12th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
I just get the spinning clock. Also the word disappears when the ‘Look up’ button is pressed
December 12th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Hi. Sorry about the spinning clock. Looks like thesaurus.com is not accessible today. Just my luck! Please try again later.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:01 am
Did you ever try www.openkapow.com and compare it to dappit?
December 13th, 2006 at 8:09 am
The data server (thesaurus.com) seems to be back online today. Please try out the thesaurus and let me know what you think.
I looked at openkapow. It seems more elaborate than dappit. Thanks for the tip, maybe I’ll try it for my next project.
January 19th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Mark,
This is absolutely awesome. I’m currently using SpringGraph in order to build a network topology map (in other words, show which servers, desktops, hubs, and proxies are communicating). Is there a way to annotate the lines between Items? That way, I can show the protocol name and data size.
If not, then I guess that I could make the annotations an Item between the “real” Items that I want to display.
Let me know your thoughts.
Thanks
February 19th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Mark,
I have been following your SpringGraph work for some time. I have a prototype of a network topology map based on SpringGraph (looks like Bruce Hopkins above is working on a similar project, so when/if you answer his question you will be answering it for me also :^)
My question is related to the rendering. Is there a way to get the graph to “snap” to it’s final layout? (or close to final layout) It would be nice to run the algorithm as fast as possible without the time it takes to show the bouncing, juggling nodes during the calculation process.
March 30th, 2007 at 11:55 am
I am using the roamer, and the text is coming from the xml file. but how do I connect the pictures.
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Hi Shaun. If your ‘node’ xml elements look something like this:, then you can display the image by adding to your itemRenderer.
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Ted asked if there is a way to get the graph to snap to its final layout. In the current version of SpringGraph, this feature is not implemented. However, since the source code for SpringGraph is available, you could attempt this modification yourself. The function SpringGraph.tick() gets called (using timers) periodically. This function calls forceDirectedLayout.tick(), to perform 1 round of calculations, and then calls invalidateDisplayList() to redraw everything in its new position. Roughly speaking, you would need modify this code to call forceDirectedLayout.tick() many times before calling invalidateDisplayList(). Ideally you would keep track of how much movement there is, and only do the redraw once the movement has gone below a certain limit.
April 5th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
[…] Someone used the DBpedia structure made an app to automatically build timelines. I think that timelines (like Simile) and graph roaming applets (like a Prefuse graph instance or the Roamer component for Flex) will be available as interfaces for Freebase soon. […]
May 16th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Hi Mark,
Is there a simple way to disable the hiding of past items when double-clicking an item in the new thesaurus roamer? I just want everything to keep popping up like in the spring graph, but I like the history pull-down box as well.
Thanks