Note The latest code for the Vistorian project is now kept in the vistorian-monorepo repository.

Vistorian (previous Networkcube)

Vistorian (in previous versions of the code called networkcube) is an open-source java script / Typescript library and a programming framework for interactive visualization of networks with the following features:

• different link types
• multiple links between nodes
• link weights
• link direction
• temporal information on links (weight / presence)
• geographical positions attached to nodes that can change over time.

Main Features:

The vistorian framework provides a range of packages and functionality:

• Ready-to-use visualizations that can be embedded in any web environment, e.g. to provide state-of-the-art visualizations to a specific group of stateholders or in a specific domain. Those visualizations are:
  • Node-link visualization,
  • Adjacency matrix,
  • Time-arc visualization to visualize frequency and topology of links over time
  • Map with overlaid node-link network.
• Graph API to query dynamic, geographic, and multivariate networks with the above-mentioned data features.
• Importers of a range of data types (GML, Paject, Matrix, CSV, JSON, ... )
• Synchronized views when, e.g., highlighting a node across all visualizations currently open in the browser. Visualizations can be spread across browser tabs and windows.
• A set of simple reuable Widgets such as slider.
• Bookmarks to save and return an arbitrary visualization state and to leave a note with any stata (bookmark).

Design Rationale:

• Browser-based: the Vistorian runs entirely in the browser and does not use any server. None of your data is transmitted over the network nor stored on any server.
• Modular: the vistorian has a set of npm packages can be included into your application. Each package has its own repository and package versions.
  • vistorian-core: core functionality for loading and storing networks, querying the graph, etc.
  • vistorian-web: a fully implemented web-application using all Vistorian packages.
  • vistorian-nodelink: an interactive node-link diagram implementation with time-slider and interactive filtering
  • vistoeian-matrix: a interactive adjacency matrix with different matrix ordering mechanisms, timeslider, and filtering mechanisms
  • vistorian-dynamicego: a time-arc visualization to show links over time.
  • vistorian-map: a geographic map visualization with overlaid links and nodes. Nodes can change positions over time.
  • vistorian-bookmarkbrowser: a menu widget that provides for search and lists all types of links and nodes in the networks. Allows for filtering (hiding) nodes and links by their type.
• Vistorian is designed for research
• Vistorian is open Source and currently in a prorotype phase. Fork the repositories and contribute to its development. Get involved: [email protected].
• Create bespoke visualizations and grow the set of visualizations for the vistorian. Read more on the wiki page [Creating Visualizations](Create Bespoke Visualizations)

Technical Specifications

• Networkcube is written in TypeScript (https://www.typescriptlang.org), a typed language that compiles into JavaScript.
• All Vistorian is available as npm-packages with the same name as in this repo.
• Data is stored in the browser's local storage, which currently is limited to 5MB. For projects on using larger networks, contact us.
• Vistorian and its visualizations are developed and tested on the Google Chrome browser. They may just work fine on other browsers and platforms but have not been tested. Feel free to do so and let us know what happens.
• Visualizations are generally written in D3 or WebGL using the THREE.js library (http://threejs.org).

More info

Check the Wiki page and our blog for the following topics:

• Prepare your data
• Import data
• Node and Link Schemas
• Graph Query API
• Messages API
• Widget API
• Visualizations
• Developing with the Vistorian
• Create Bespoke Visualizations for the Vistorian
• Example Application