Highlighting in Visualizations


When you move the mouse pointer over an item (for example, a bar segment, a pie sector, a line, or a marker) in a visualization, a tooltip appears displaying details about the highlighted item. The tooltip displays a few items by default, but it can also be configured to show information from additional columns or expressions.

To highlight an item:

  1. Point to the item of interest.

    Response: A tooltip will appear with information about the selected item. For example, in a stacked bar chart you will get information about the category that the segment represents as well as the height of that specific segment.

To change what is displayed in the tooltip:

  1. Open the Properties dialog for the visualization.

    Comment: This is done by right-clicking the visualization and selecting Properties from the pop-up menu.

  2. Go to the Tooltip page.

  3. Select the check boxes for the values you want to show in the tooltip, and clear the check boxes for values you do not want to show.

  4. If desired, click Add to create expressions or add other columns whose values you want to show in the tooltip.

    Response: The Add Tooltip Value dialog is displayed.

    Comment: See "To display images in the tooltip" below for more information about using images in tooltips.

  5. Select the column or expression of interest.

  6. Type a Name to display.

    Comment: This is the text that will be shown together with the expression value in the tooltip, and also what will be shown in the list of available tooltip values.

  7. Click OK.

    Response: The Add Tooltip Value dialog is closed and the newly added value is shown in the Tooltip property page.

  8. Click Close.

To display images in the tooltip:

Most visualizations can display images from a binary image column, a shapefile, or a GeoJSON file in the tooltips. Your company might also have enabled a virtual column producer that allows other types of data to be displayed as images, for example, columns containing chemical structures.

  1. Open the Properties dialog for the visualization.

    Comment: This is done by right-clicking the visualization and selecting Properties from the pop-up menu.

  2. Go to the Tooltip page.

  3. Click Add.

    Response: The Add Tooltip Value dialog is displayed.

  4. Select the Column of interest. If your images are in a binary image column or a geometry column in your data table, you select that column directly. In some cases, like when you want to display linked chemical structures, you will instead select an ID column here, which at a later step is mapped against the desired output.

  5. Type a Name to display.

    Comment: This is the text that will be shown together with the expression value in the tooltip, and also what will be shown in the list of available tooltip values.

  6. If you did not you select an image/geometry column directly from the data table, you must specify where to Get content from. For example, if you selected an ID column to be mapped against structure data in an information link in step 3, you must select Get content from: Structure Column to display chemical structures in the tooltip.

    Comment: Most people will not need to specify anything under Get content from, but your company may have set up other types of custom virtual column producers that can be selected here.

  7. If you have selected something other than (Selected column) under Get content from, you might need to click on Settings... and make some changes in the dialog. For example, this is where you would specify which information link to connect to when displaying linked structures in a tooltip.

  8. Under Show as, select one of the options Image, Image from URL or Geometry. You might also see renderers which are needed for other types of images, for example, a structure renderer such as Symyx® Draw. This specifies the type of image to be rendered.

  9. If desired, change the Size of the tooltip image by moving the slider,

  10. Clear the Include value name in tooltip check box if you only want to display the image in the tooltip and not the name.

  11. Click OK.

    Response: The Add Tooltip Value dialog is closed and the newly added value is shown in the Tooltip property page.

  12. Click Close.

To copy tooltips for marked items:

  1. Mark the interesting visualization items (bar segments, lines, markers, etc.).

  2. Right-click on the visualization.

    Response: A pop-up menu is shown.

  3. Select Copy from the menu.

    Response: The tooltips for the currently marked visualization items are copied to the clipboard.

See also:

Marking in Visualizations