Asterisq Blog

Visually Emphasize Node Depth in Constellation Roamer

At its heart, Constellation Roamer is a tree visualization. Each time a new node is selected, a tree rooted at that node is presented to the user. In these tree visualizations it's nice to give some indication of each node's depth. Some visualizations use concentric rings to explicitly show how far a node is from the root node.

Roamer really only supports indicating depth for two levels: level zero—the selected node—and everything else. The reason for this is that the number of customizable properties would explode if each node was rendered differently depending on its distance from the root node. However, with version 1.2.5 there is another way.

Check out the live demo after the jump.

Constellation Roamer 1.2.5 Release

A new update for Constellation Roamer is now out. Version 1.2.5 fixes a bunch of bugs and adds some of the most commonly-requested features. Here's what you'll find in the new release.

Chevron Careers Tree Visualization

The Chevron Careers website has just gone live, boasting an interactive tree visualization built on Constellation Framework. The customizations were built by Asterisq with a turn around time of just a week-and-a-half!

Read on to find out about specific features used in this visualization.

Facebook GraphViz Application

Fav Mapper is an application that lets you browse your friends' favourite movies, music, and books. It's built on the ubiquitous Facebook platform and uses Constellation Framework to produce an interactive graph visualization. Go ahead, give it a go.

Roamer Used in Porch Project and Debate Graph

It's always exciting to see what people are building with the Constellation visualization tools! Recently, I came across a couple websites that use Constellation Roamer—both of which are freely visible on the internet. That means you could go over and check them out!

More Framework Documentation

A bunch of new tutorials for Constellation Framework have been posted. Head over to the Documentation page if you'd like to learn how to use this Actionscript visualization library. There's now information on using the graph data structure, creating your very own node renderers, and detailed information about some of the node layout behaviors.

If there are other tutorials you'd like to see, please contact us!

Framework Tutorials Posted

Tutorials for the Constellation Framework graph visualization library have started to go up. Now there are tutorials for getting started in both Flex and Flash, and for using the graph data structure. You can find find them under Framework Documentation.

Framework Released!

Constellation Framework—the new graph visualization library for Flash and Flex—has been released! Go to the product page to check out the feature list and find out what it's capable of!

Coming Up: Roamer 1.2.3 and a New Product

There has been a lot of work going on around here and as a result we have some exciting news. A new version of Constellation Roamer is on its way! Even more exciting, though, is the imminent release of a Flash/Flex library for graph visualization!

Read on for info on the features.

Howto: Roamer Navigation History Using Javascript

One common request for Constellation Roamer is a history feature. Web application developers want to give their users the option to look over the trail of nodes they've viewed.

This can be done using the Javascript interface methods built into Roamer. Before we get into the howto, here's a demo of the feature in action (after the jump).

Roamer: Setting Up the Javascript Interface

Activating the Javascript interface in Constellation Roamer is easy but getting it setup can take a bit more work. This has a lot to do with how different browsers embed Flash movies in HTML pages but this tutorial will help you get that sorted out.

New Asterisq Blog

Asterisq now has a blog where you'll find helpful tips for making the most of our products, links to implementations of our visualizations, and of course, the latest news.

Roamer v1.2 Released!

The latest version of Constellation Roamer fixes some bugs and introduces the most-requested features.

Featured on Flowing Data

Nathan Chase of FlowingData posted an article about the online visualization market. Constellation Roamer was featured as one of the premium online visualization tools available on the web today.

Roamer v1.1 Released!

Less than a month after initial release, a new version is out! Several features have been added including panning, images and new shapes for node graphics, arrowheads, and a javascript interface.

Mini-Review by Pete Warden

Pete Warden has posted a short article regarding Constellation Roamer.

Update: Pete posted a follow-up article after Constellation Roamer version 1.1 was released.

Update: Pete posted a follow-up article after Constellation Roamer version 1.1 was released.

Roamer v1.0 Released!

The web-based graph visualization tool, Constellation Roamer, is now available for purchase. Interested? Check out the live demo.