[tor-dev] Feedback on recent Globe improvements

[thomas lörtsch]

Hi,

nice work! One nitpick: if the legend to the left was colour coded like the graphs I would not need to hover over the graphs to see which curve reflects which category.

I was thinking about how it could be possible to combine all perspectives in one graphing window. Especially the seperate window for the bandwidth perspective seems a little wasted and disconnected. Maybe the bandwidth could be rendered as a backdrop plane behind the curves, then on top / in front of it the bandwidth graphs in shades of e.g. red to yellow and the weights graphs in shades of blue to green. Not sure if that works or if you have tried it already. Would need 3 scales on the left, probably colour coded again. Benefit would be that the time slider on the bottom would work for all perspectives synchronously. I always like to have all the information in one place so that my eye doesnt have to wonder, my brain doesn’t have to correlate etc. But of course there’s a treshold where the interface get’s too cluttered to be useful anymore. 

Ciao
Thomas



On 02 Apr 2014, at 09:35, Karsten Loesing <karsten at torproject.org> wrote:

> On 01/04/14 22:12, Christian wrote:
>> On 01.04.2014 09:56, Karsten Loesing wrote:
>>>> Do you think it would be better to modify the graphs so all of them
>>>> start/end at the same time? (There is a small offset because the first
>>>> and last fields aren't always the same)
>>> 
>>> I thought about this, but didn't bring it up yet, because it may not be
>>> trivial to implement.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Idea #1: Does the graphing engine support defining the x axis limits
>>> independent of displayed data points?  That is, can you draw a graph
>>> like this (bad ASCII "art" ahead):
>>> 
>>>              +-----------------------------------+
>>>              |                                   |
>>>              |                       -O          |
>>>    O--       | --O------O--        --            |
>>>       --     |-            --    --              |
>>>         --O--|               --O-                |
>>>              |                                   |
>>>              +-----------------------------------+
>>>           x_start                              x_end
>>> 
>>> If so, I'd say try setting x_start to current system time minus whatever
>>> period you're displaying and x_end to current system time.
>>> 
>>> By doing so, you'll discard a few data points left to x_start, and
>>> you'll leave some graph space empty between the last O and x_end.  But
>>> you'll have graphs displaying exactly the promised time period, and
>>> graphs for that period will be easier to compare.  I'd say that's a fine
>>> compromise.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Idea #2: If the graphing engine does not support redefining x axis
>>> limits, you'll need to do some tricks: if there's no data point for
>>> x_start, compute this point as the average of the two data points before
>>> and after x_start; also add a "null" value for x_end.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Idea #3: If you want to postpone implementing this, feel free to open a
>>> ticket and paste our conversation there.  Especially if you'd have to
>>> implement a workaround for the current graphing engine and re-implement
>>> something else for Globe-node.  This is a nice feature and worth doing,
>>> but it's not a blocker.
>>> 
>> 
>> I'm going to try solving this tomorrow. If nothing useful comes out of
>> it I'll open an issue.
> 
> Sounds good.  Maybe, if you don't mind, let's move this discussion to a
> ticket regardless.
> 
>>>> Next up I'll add some data for the left column. Is there anything
>>>> special that should be visible there?
>>>> If not I'm going to use the status.github idea and display average graph
>>>> data there.
>>> 
>>> Average graph data sounds good.  (If you're cutting off values left to
>>> x_start as discussed above, be sure to exclude them from the average.)
>>> 
>> 
>> I updated the #11349 build with average data:
>> 
>> http://globe.rndm.de/canary/index-11349.html
> 
> Looks great!  I added some feedback to #11349.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> All the best,
> Karsten
> 
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