Comments on: MooWheel: Unique Data Visualization

By: jdempcy

jdempcy — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:47:33 +0000

Cool stuff. Love to see MooTools helping for advanced applications like this. Has anyone checked out the Flex data visualization, flow chart, graphs and statistics stuff? It seems pretty powerful. I caught a demo at the 360Flex 2007 conference in Seattle and was certainly impressed. A side not about this post: What’s with the rating? Currently it says “-39996 rating from 25″. I thought this post was quite good actually!

By: OndraM

OndraM — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:25:21 +0000

Veeeeery nice! I have to disagree with the statement that it’s nt easy to read. If you try their demo and hover over a node, i highlight all the links of that node. (http://www.unwieldy.net/moowheel/demo/large.html)

Direction indication would be nice though.

By: icoloma

icoloma — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:31:00 +0000

Say you really like Pacino, Scorsese and De Niro, such an interface would help to check which movies you have not seen yet. But, to be really usable the interface would still lack “grouping” (actors vs movies vs genres, for example)

By: GregHouston

GregHouston — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:00:28 +0000

Very nice. I love data visualization, and am glad to start seeing some AJAX versions.
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When you hover on one of your nodes, I am not sure if it is the “to” or “from” connections that are highlighted. It might be nice if you used three highlight colors, one for “to”, one for “from”, and one for “mutually connected”.
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More examples of data visualization, though most are either Flash or Java: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

By: Gordon

Gordon — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:09:59 +0000

It’s good the connections get highlighted, but I did expect them to do so when I hover over the labels of the nodes. This could be improved. Would be nice if the connected node labels would get highlighted too. And I think I would find it more usable if the highlighting could be even more emphasized. The whole thing is just too colorful for the highlight to provide good contrast (at least to me)

By: Joeri

Joeri — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:34:23 +0000

@bander: try hovering over the bullets of each node. It highlights the connections.

Graph layout is an art unto itself (there are whole conferences organized on the subject every year), and whether you think a graph is useful depends highly on taste and perception.

By: wwwmarty

wwwmarty — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:17:09 +0000

it’s very pretty but i doubt it’s very useful…

By: bander

bander — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:15:44 +0000

It is indeed cool-looking, but I think the distortion makes it more difficult to quickly see which nodes are linked than it would be if all of the lines were straight.