The User Interface

After starting NodeVis, you have a variety of options to display a graph. Either you generate a random one by clicking the "Create Random" Button, or you open one of the datasets included with the program (/data/ Folder). by clicking "File". There is a small test dataset ("Test.nodes") and a dataset containing entities from the greek mythologies (like gods, kings, monsters, etc.) connected by their parental or marital relationships ("greek_gods.ego").

After you opened this dataset, you will see a screen like this:

At the right of the screen, you see the graph displayed as a tree on concentric rings, on left you see the user interface.

The selected node is displayed at the center of the concentric rings. The position of the other nodes on the rings correspond to their distance to the selected node.
You can use the Mouse wheel to zoom out and into the visualisation.
When you hover over a node, a tooltip with information of the node is displayed.
If you click on a node, it will be selected and therefore centered in the rings. When this is done, the nodes will change position, this is done by interpolating their polar coordinates. Instead of just displaying the nodes on their new position, they are smoothly animated and rotated around the center of the concentric rings. Node sort order and directions are preserved as good as possible to help the user see what is going on.

On the left, you can set a few parameters for the animation process:
- Linear vs. ArcTan: when selecting ArcTan, the Nodes will move in a "slow-in, slow-out" manner, otherwise they will move linearly.
- Rebuild tree: When selecting this, the tree will be rebuilt everytime another node is selected. This might be very confusing, since tree node connections might change very drastically
- Animate Transition: When selecting this, the nodes will not be animated to their new position at once, but just moved one step at a time. This can be used to see what exactly is going on when selecting a new node.

The Create Random Button generates a completely random graph that will be displayed at once.

By entering a search text and clicking the Search Button, you can search through the text fields of all displayed nodes. If the text is found, the corresponing node will be selected.

When opening an .ego file, a legend will be displayed showing the color codes of the node classes and connection types.

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