Interactive network exploration widget.
Net Explorer visualizes graphs, lets the user explore them by selecting their individual parts and gives the corresponding data to other widgets. It is currently available only in the latest (Qt4) version of Orange.
More information on the use the widget from Python is available in documentation on orngNetwork Orange module.
Four navigation buttons are located in the upper right corner of the control area.
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Zooming: Zooming mode is selected by default. User can zoom in a rectangle by pressing and holding the left mouse button and dragging the mouse to draw a rectangle to zoom in to. Zoom out (one level) command can then be executed by pressing right mouse button. Zoom to extent: By pressing this button the zoom is automatically set to show all visible nodes in the network. Zoom selection: By pressing this button the zoom is automatically set to show all selected nodes in the network. Panning: Use this mode to drag the network around the canvas. |
The widget features a two-stage procedure for selection of vertices, which allows for a very flexible manipulation of subsets of vertices. Vertices can be marked and/or selected. Marked vertices are presented by filled circled and selected vertices are highlighted with a yellow border.
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Vertices can be selected manually by clicking or by drawing selection rectangle. Selection mode is enabled by pressing fifth button from the top in the upper right corner in control area. |
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Another way to select vertices is to add or remove the marked vertices to or from the selection, or to replace the current selection with the marked vertices (buttons seven to nine). |
The vertices can be marked based upon values of the attributes of the corresponding objects. Most marking options are available in the Mark Tab.
Parameters in vertices tab govern the appearance of network vertices and data associated with them. User can select optimization method, vertex color and size attribute, set the labels and tooltips and other rendering options.
The user can specify the number of iterations of the optimization procedure where applicable.
One or more attributes can be chosen to be shown as Vertex labels or tooltips. To reduce the visual clutter, the user can also decide to Show labels on marked vertices only. Checking Inside view enables a special mode in which only selected vertex and vertices closer to it than the specified distance (in terms of the number of connections, not their lengths) are shown.
Show missing values decides whether missing values should be displayed (as question marks).
Parameters in edges tab are used to specify the appearance of edges. One can set edges color, width and whether weights of edges are displayed.
When Explore vertex distances is selected, the user can examine the distance between vertices, as given in the "Vertex Distance" signal. To display the distance, one must first select a vertex. When hovering over an arbitrary vertex, the distance between the selected vertex and the vertex under the mouse pointer is displayed as a popup.
Most options for interactive network exploration are gathered here. User can search for nodes by value in items meta data, mark neighbours of selected vertices or mark vertices by number of connections.
The info tab gives some general information (such as number of vertices, number of edges, diameter, clustering coefficient) about the network. Button Degree Distribution calculates and displays the degree distribution. Finally, the network can be saved in Pajek format by clicking on Save network button.
The best way to get to know how to use this widget is by playing with it. Try some of the following network data sets:
More comprehensive list of examples will be available soon.