using scrollbars with cytoscape.js - scrollbar

Has anyone used cytoscape.js with scrollbars?
cytoscapePanZoom works nicely, but scrollbars are useful also, and less confusing for some of us, some of the time.

If you want a sense of the viewport extent, you should use the navigator extension:
https://github.com/cytoscape/cytoscape.js-navigator
It gives a bird's eye view of the graph so you can see how the extent of the viewport compares to the overall graph.
Edit: Also of note is this discussion in the tracker: https://github.com/cytoscape/cytoscape.js/issues/721

Related

Render 2D text in Autodesk Forge without aliasing or blurring

Turns out I’m working with the Autodesk Forge viewer and Three.js, trying to render 2D text that can be interacted with (specifically select, rotate, and move).
To do this I am working with meshes (using MeshBasicMaterial, Mesh and TextGeometry) but it turns out that the text does not look perfectly sharp, it presents aliasing and I found that according to the API reference, the antialiasing is not applicable to 2d.
Here are some examples of the problem, as you can see, the more I move away from the plane, the worse the text looks (and even up close it doesn't look perfect):
I have tried to make a test representing the text with a Sprite (despite the fact that it would mean having to change the entire implementation already made with meshes of other functionalities) but apart from the fact that I cannot see it, I have seen example images and they do not appear either well: aliasing is visible from a distance and it looks really blurry up close. Here some examples:
Is there a way to correct this problem or is this the most I can get in 2D? I've tried searching for information on this but can't find anything helpful. And what has puzzled me the most has been realizing that antialiasing was not applicable in the case of 2d, like making it clear that nothing can be done to fix it.
I would be very grateful if you could solve my doubts, thank you very much in advance for your help.
An easier alternative, is to just use a higher pixel ratio for the renderer...
window.devicePixelRatio=2;
viewer.resize();
For example, using the custom geometry text, from Joao's demo, you can see the same aliasing issue at DPR=0.5 and DPR=1.0 ...
https://joaomartins-forge.github.io/textgeometry-sample/
But when I set the DPR=2.0, the text looks clean. The trade off is rendering performance, but your 2D drawings may be simple enough that it won't matter. You can use a 'mouse up' camera settle trick, to switch between DPR of 1 and 2, if you want a better UX experience.
There are a few ways to solve this aliasing issue for 2D (and 3D text).
The way I would recommend for your use case, is to use DIV elements (THREE.CSS3DRenderer), instead of text converted into three.js tessellated triangle geometry, as shown in this blog post:
https://forge.autodesk.com/blog/how-do-you-add-labels-forge-viewer
You can find out more information about THREE.CSS3DRenderer here:
https://threejs.org/docs/#examples/en/renderers/CSS3DRenderer
and an Example here: https://threejs.org/examples/#css3d_periodictable
Using CSS3DRenderer instead of CSS2DRenderer, means you will get the correct scaling (and rotation) of the div element as you zoom into your 2D drawing and the mathematics inside the calculation for the matrix transform has less edge-cases.
Once you are using DIV elements for your text, you will notice that the text is sharper and has no aliasing issues. That's because it is not being rasterized by the webGL pipeline, but by the SKIA library used by chrome/firefox/opera/etc for rasterizing text.
There is one final option, that uses signed-distance fields, but it's probably overkill for what you need.
Let me know if you want some example code.

How do you match up your webdesign to make it pixel perfect?

I often find myself in the need for matching up my webdesign to some reference-image. I used to use the PixelPerfect plugin for FireBug, to overlay an image on top of my design - however these days I mostly develop in Chrome, and there isn't a comparable tool to PixelPerfect.
My perfect tool would be some kind of HUD display that would overlay the entire screen, so I could use it disregarding whatever browser I'm currently working in.
How do you match up your webdesign to make it pixel perfect? Any tools and tips is highly appreciated.
How do you match up your webdesign to make it pixel perfect?
Don't, seriously.
There are so many devices and browsers and other factors that mean that, today more than ever, designs cannot be pixel perfect. To even try and make them so is going to cost a lot of time.
People don't compare websites between browsers so save yourself some valuable time and sanity!
A great way that I've seen done involves work on both ends, but it works nicely.
First, make sure that your designs fit a grid: repeating, same-sized columns with fixed width gutters. You can take that grid layer and turn it into a background image that you apply to your containers during development. That way, if anything doesn't line up with the grid, you'll see it immediately.
try online service like makiapp.com it just like pixelperfect for firebug.

Webdesign: How to deal with window resizing?

Can somebody please tell me the best way to deal with different window sizes and with a user resizing the window when creating a webpage.
Because I always find myself creating layouts with html, css, etc. and at first everything look perfect. But as soon as I increase or decrease the size of the browser window everything falls apart.
Also it would be great if anybody could point me to some sort of guide or anything similar.
Thanks it advance! Any help is greatly appreciated!
For detection, you may want to use css media queries (in which case you may want to to use https://github.com/scottjehl/Respond Respond.js's shim for older browsers, to add fuller cross browser support), and target certain screen widths. http://html5boilerplate.com and it's default css: http://html5boilerplate.com/css/style.css has a great default css set for exactly that type of media query.
Another approach is to give a fixed minimum and maximum widths to the outer container of the page. For example:
body{text-align:center;}
#outer-container{text-align:left;margin:0 auto 0; width:98%;max-width:900px;min-width:760px;}
that way you can grow and shrink it and see how it looks within a certain range and know that other viewing windows are going to see that plus a horizontal scroll bar at worst for small viewing.
In general, just using the html5boilerplate as a starting base is a great approach, it's an excellent piece of work.

CSS Solution to image rendering

I have an zoomable image in the website. When the image is zoomed out to a large extend it appears very SHARP and ugly.
I tried using image-rendering : opimizequality, optimizespeed CSS but did not work.
Is there any other way out.
Thanks
According to image-rendering on MDC, image-rendering is currently only supported in Firefox 3.6. A similar property, -ms-interpolation-mode, is available for IE7 and IE8. Other browsers don't seem to have this feature (yet).
As latze mentioned, your best bet is to edit the image itself, scaling it to the level you need. I'm not sure, but you may try using <canvas> to perform the interpolation you desire.
I would simply edit the picture instead of the CSS.
Try making the picture slightly larger step by step while you make sure the picture doesn't (as we call it in danish, not sure if it correct english) "pixelate".
This can be done in various image editing programs from The Gimp-shop to Photoshop.
Images aren't meant to be resized that much. Think about an image as a graph where each pixel is a single square in the graph. If you stretch the image out, you're essentially making the pixels stretch out. Some programs try to fill in these pixels with what they think would fit there, others just make the pixel bigger, and others just fill in the surrounding areas with the same pixels to give it a sort of glowish effect. Resizing images down, while it tends to work better, also creates the same effect, because you're just chopping off pixels instead of adding them. Most programs that I've seen will squish pixels together, combining whichever colors were in those pixels. If you have a high detail image, then chopping off pixels is going to make it look horrible. There are no really safe ways to determine which pixels need to be retained to keep the overall image in tact. Most websites that have zoom features have a much larger image which has been resized down and they let you zoom to view the details of the larger image. Some even get separate images of the massive detailed one and the smaller preview one.

CSS: On-mouse-over functionality from plot covered by a 'sheen' layer

I have a javascript plot on my page with "data point highlighter" functionality: when the mouse hovers over the point, you can see the coordinates popup. I also want to place a semi-transparent "sheen" image layer over the plot to make it look glossy. I can achieve this with the z-index, but the on-mouse-over functionality of the js plot stops working. Is there a way to have the sheen layer on top and still have the on-mouse-over of the layer below (the plot layer)? Many thanks...
I can't think of a way to do that easily, apart from splitting apart the plot image and the area that reacts to the mouseover, and placing the latter above the sheen - which may be bothersome to do.
If it's semi-transparent, though, would it be an option to do the whole thing the other way round? Placing the "sheen" below the plot, and making the plot semi-transparent?
This is not possible. Shame.
Actually, I believe it is possible, but it's a bit of a messy workaround, and, in essence, involves capturing mouse/cursor position x/y location and mapping that to the plot layer -- not the easiest or optimal task, let alone completely inefficient. I realize this is an older question, but thought I'd point this out for future users.
Update: Firefox has a CSS property geared toward this in the 3.6: http://demos.hacks.mozilla.org/openweb/pointer-events/

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