Visualising a map

Visualise mode lays the map out automatically and lets you colour, size and filter it. Nothing you do here changes the map’s data. Switch to it from the mode menu in the top bar.

Visualise mode can show every node on the map, including ones you haven’t placed on the Edit canvas. That’s controlled by Include nodes not placed in Edit in the Nodes section, which is on by default.

The sidebar has three tabs. It starts collapsed; click a tab to open it.

Visualisation: what the map shows. From top to bottom:
1. Visualisation mode: choose Landscape, Bridges or Capabilities. The chosen mode’s own options appear inside it.
2. Under Applies to every mode: Connections and Nodes, which set what the map is drawn from. Both move nodes.
Visibility filter: picks out some nodes and connections, greying out the rest. Nothing moves. While it’s doing anything, its icon shows how many conditions are on.
Settings: how lines are drawn.

Visualisation modes

Landscape (force-directed topology) shows the overall shape of the network. Connected nodes pull together.
Bridges (betweenness centrality) finds the network’s communities (groups of nodes more connected to each other than to the rest) and colours them. Each node is sized by how much it acts as a bridge between parts of the network, compared with the map’s strongest bridge. Communities are drawn as separate islands, so bridges are the lines stretched across the gaps.
- The legend names each community after its best-connected member, such as “Around Big Trust (12)”.
- Each community’s main bridge is labelled in bold at every zoom level.
- On a large map, Computing centrality… shows at the top left of the map while it works.
Capabilities (tag clustering) groups nodes by the tags you choose in Cluster by. See Cluster by tags.

Switching between modes animates the nodes from one arrangement to the next.

Size and colour

Each mode offers the controls that make sense for it:

Mode	Controls
Landscape	Size nodes by, Colour nodes by
Bridges	Colour nodes by (defaults to Detected community). Size always shows bridging.
Capabilities	Cluster by, Size nodes by. Colour always follows the clusters.

Size takes a measure. Colour takes a measure, a tag group or a single tag. With a group, each node takes its tag’s colour, the same as in Edit mode, and nodes with none of the group’s tags are grey. With a tag, the nodes that have it take its colour and everything else is grey, so you can pick out one set of nodes against the rest. Tags are listed with their group’s name in brackets. Cluster by takes tags. The lists only offer tags and measures that some node on the map actually has.

When colour is in use, a legend in the bottom-right corner explains it. It shows up to eight entries, then “+ N more”.

Every legend starts open. Click its title to collapse it to one line, and again to open it. A legend is at most half the canvas tall. A longer one scrolls, with an arrow at the bottom while there’s more.

Cluster by tags

In Capabilities, tick the tags to cluster by under Cluster by. Tags in a tag group are listed under the group’s name. Tick the group’s own box to choose all its tags at once. Clear unticks everything.

With two or more tags chosen, Clustering sets how they combine:

Clustering	What you see
Exact (the default)	A cluster for each combination of the chosen tags a node has, such as “Digital + Organising”.
Overlap	A labelled hub for each tag. A node sits between the hubs of the tags it has. Tags that share many nodes sit close together.
Similarity	Nodes whose chosen tags mostly overlap cluster together. Fewer, broader clusters, named after the tags most of their nodes have, such as “Mostly Digital + Research”.

Nodes with none of the chosen tags are coloured pale grey and listed in the legend as None of these. Exact and Similarity gather them into a cluster of their own. In Overlap, only their connections place them.

The legend lists each cluster with its number of nodes, largest first. The eight largest get their own colours, and the rest share one, listed as Other groups.

A saved view that clusters by a measure opens with no tags chosen. For how Similarity decides what’s similar, see How visualisation works.

Draw the map from

The Connections section decides which connections shape the layout, and how hard each one pulls. It applies in every mode and stays set when you switch mode.

All connection types (the default): every connection shapes the layout, including ones with only a note. Choose how a pair joined by several connections behaves: Count once or Pull closer the more they have. To leave some types out, click Leave out connection types… and untick them.
One connection type, such as “Funded”: only that type’s connections are drawn and shape the layout. Nodes without one fade. If the type records a value, choose Connected or not or Weighted by the value (such as Weighted by Amount).
Custom mix (score each type): give each type a score from 0 to 1. Higher scores pull harder. A type scored 0 is hidden.

When you weight by a value and some connections have none, a tick box offers to leave those out.

Changing this section moves the nodes. To hide connections without moving anything, use the Visibility filter. For how the weighting is worked out, see How visualisation works.

Leave nodes out

The Nodes section decides which nodes the map is drawn from. A node left out isn’t drawn, and its connections don’t shape the layout, Bridges or the clusters. The map is laid out again without it.

Include nodes not placed in Edit shows when the map has unplaced nodes. Untick it to leave them out.
Keep or leave out nodes by tag or measure adds a condition:
- A tag group, such as “Org type”: click the tags you mean, then choose Keep only or Leave out. A node has at most one tag from a group, so Keep only also leaves out nodes with no tag from it, unless you tick Also keep nodes with no Org type.
- Other tags (tags in no group) work the same way.
- A measure, such as “Annual income”: a minimum and maximum. Nodes with no value stay unless you untick Keep nodes with no Annual income.

A node has to pass every condition. Each tag shows how many nodes have it, and a measure’s boxes show its lowest and highest values. The section says how many nodes are drawn; Keep all removes every condition. If the conditions leave no node, the canvas says so, with Keep all nodes.

Nodes left out by these conditions are counted at the top left of the map, such as 5 left out. Click it to open this section.

Visibility filter

The Visibility filter picks out the nodes and connections you choose. Nodes that don’t match grey out in place, and connections that don’t match are hidden. Nothing moves, and you can still click a greyed-out node.

It starts empty. Add conditions with Filter nodes by tag or measure and Filter connections by type, date or amount. Each condition is a card; click the cross on a card to remove it, or Clear all. The top of the tab counts what’s showing, such as “Showing 5 of 30 nodes · 20 of 34 connections”.

Nodes: the same tag and measure conditions as Leave nodes out, with Show only and Grey out. A connection between a node the filter shows and one it greys out stays drawn, faintly, so “only funders” still shows who they fund. Only connections between two greyed-out nodes are hidden.
Type: click the types to show. A type the map isn’t drawn from is marked not drawn and can’t be picked.
Date: Between two dates keeps connections that happened, or held, in that range. As of a date keeps connections that held then. Both take a year, month or day. Connections with no dates stay visible unless you untick Include connections with no dates.
Amount, for a type that records a value, such as “Funded amount”: a minimum and maximum, such as grants of £50K or more. Connections with no value stay visible unless you untick the box beneath.

Number and date boxes apply when you press Enter or leave the box; Escape puts back what was there.

A node that has connections, but none left visible, is greyed out too. In Bridges, node sizes are worked out again from the connections still visible.

While the filter is doing anything, the top left of the map shows its counts. Click them to open the filter, or the cross to clear it.

Direction colours

When the filter shows exactly one directed connection type and you select a node, its neighbours are coloured by direction. A legend in the bottom-left corner, such as Direction of funds, shows which colour means which: “funds selected” or “funded by selected”.

Settings

Connection thickness: a slider setting the width of every line.
Show connection strength as thickness: draws stronger connections thicker. Set how much thicker with Thickness range. Tick Log scale for values that vary hugely, such as grant amounts. Under Count once, or one connection type that isn’t weighted by value, every line stays the same width.

Move around and inspect

Drag empty canvas to pan, or hold Space and drag from anywhere. Scroll to zoom. Zoom to fit (the magnifier with a plus, in the toolbar’s Layout group) frames the whole map.
Names show once you zoom in. Zoomed out, hover over a node to see its name; once its name is on the map, hovering doesn’t repeat it.
Click a node or connection to see it in the Details panel on the right. It’s the same panel as in Edit mode, read-only. In Bridges it adds an Analysis section with the node’s betweenness score.
Selecting a node picks it out. It and its neighbours grow to at least twice the size of the smallest node; nodes already that big keep their size. It turns dark, so it stands apart from its neighbours, and its name shows in bold at every zoom level. Other nodes dim, and connections that don’t touch it fade. The change ripples quickly outward from the node when you select it, and inward when you deselect it.
To change what you’re looking at, click Edit in the panel’s header. It switches to Edit mode with the same node or connection open.
About this map, at the top right of the canvas, describes what the map is showing and where its data comes from (see About this map).
When your settings leave some of a node’s connections off the map, its Connections list shows the ones on the map first. The rest sit under Hidden by current settings, closed until you click it, grouped by why:
- Not drawn from: the Connections section leaves them out, such as “Met” connections on a map drawn from “Funded”.
- Filtered out: the Visibility filter hides them.
- Unplaced node not shown: the other node is unplaced, and Include nodes not placed in Edit is off.
- Node left out: the Nodes section leaves the other node out, or the view leaves it out for having no connections left.
- Connection left out: the view leaves the connection out, as a step in a reveal can.

Find a node

Click the magnifier at the left of the toolbar and start typing a node’s name. Use the arrow keys and Enter, or click a match. The node is selected, its details open, and the map zooms to fit it and the nodes it’s connected to. A node with no visible connections is centred instead. Escape or clicking elsewhere closes the search.

Matches the map isn’t showing plainly are muted: greyed out ones are greyed out by the filter, not shown ones are unplaced while those are left out, and left out ones are left out by Nodes. Picking a not shown or left out node draws it anyway, until you select something else.

Clicking a node does nothing

If clicking a node closes the Details panel instead of opening it, and you can’t drag nodes, your browser’s anti-fingerprinting protection is changing what the page reads from the map’s image. The map reads it only to tell which node is under your pointer, in your browser, and sends nothing anywhere. When this happens, a notice at the top left of the map says so.

Allow it for this site. Clicking works again, and the notice goes away, as soon as it’s allowed. If you changed a setting rather than answering the browser’s prompt, reload the page.

Firefox, Zen, LibreWolf: click the shield in the address bar and turn off tracking protection for this site. If that’s not enough, privacy.resistFingerprinting is on in about:config. Allow canvas when the address bar asks, or turn the setting off.
Brave: click the Brave icon in the address bar and lower Fingerprinting for this site.
An extension such as CanvasBlocker: add this site to its allow list.

Until then, Find a node still selects nodes.

To save what you’ve set up, or export it as an image, see Saved views and images.