Quote:
Originally posted by kevina
Regarding your request for hierarchical filtering: if you could see a 'filtered' Data Explorer Pane, what would it show? All items that matched the criteria and all of their children? What would the matched items be parented to? I can't quite imagine how to filter a hierarchical tree with some data missing... Would all the parents (and children) of matched items be displayed and exclude any 'branches of data' (from the root item) that have no matches within? Please elaborate on your suggestion...
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Their are several tested techniques for working with filtered trees. In my mind, the best way to think about the problem is to recognize the fact that the filter selects specfic nodes throughout the tree. You then need to decide what to do visually with parent/child nodes around the select nodes.
This can be described in two simple options:
Show parents (or show N parents)
Show children (or show N children)
You then use color or other visual mechanisms to differentiate between actual selected nodes and "ghost" nodes (I think that is what Ecco called them).
A couple examples:
For instance, Ecco would show parents and children. It would show the parent nodes in blue.
Shadowplan by default doesn't show parents or children, but if you turn on "greedy mode" it shows the children. I'll add shadowplan is a great example of the power of using a tree view with columns and filtering.
Thanks,
d