Hiding of Facet Row in Cube Grid by User

[tece321]

We are making use of Cube grids in one of our applications of this great product.

While a User looking at a Cube grid can hide a column, is it possible for the User to hide the top Facet rows of a cube grid?
We don't want to add special context menus or select buttons to allow users to do this. Is it supported in the Framework, and if not could it be?

[Isomorphic]

Could you explain what you mean by a facet row? For example, in this sample, would it be the equivalent of picking a fixed value for the Regions facet using the drop-downs on the left?

What user interaction do you imagine for this, if not an external drop-down menu? A context menu on the facet label?

Do you want this only for row facets or for either column or row facets?

If the above is the wrong notion of "facet row", please explain in more depth, ideally by pointing to a cube sample and indicating what would be changed.

[tece321]

Yes I'm asking for a context menu on the facet table. Let me know if you can't view the attached snapshot of a simple cube grid we created. We're using a lot of cube grids it seems.



This is different than your single top row showcase example. I have added a crude pointer to the rows a user might want to hide, which I have named Row Facets We're looking for a context click in those rows that would allow the user to hide them.

I suppose our users may eventually want to hide any row in the cube grid, but they have started out by asking if these top row facets can be hidden.

T

[Isomorphic]

OK, just to sync up on terminology, each row of headers above the grid is called a column facet, because it labels columns. "row facets" mean the facets that render on the left, which label rows. The three dark blue rectangles you're pointing at - "Project", "Block", "Synth Install" - are facet labels, in this case, column facet labels, as they label the column facets. The headers to the right are called facetValue headers (each shows a facetValue from the facet).

"Hiding" any facet means picking a fixed value for the facet as we covered before. You could add a context menu item to the facetValue headers that said "Show only this value" using the facetValueContextClick event (however, don't do this yet, we just discovered this SmartClient API is not properly wrapped for SmartGWT and we're fixing it). If you instead wanted a context menu on the facetLabel, you'd need a (potentially hierarchical) menu to pick which facetValue to be the only one to show, and that's a bit awkward, so we wouldn't recommend it.

Finally, whether you enable doing this via a context menu or not, we highly recommend having an external control to do it as well. Context menus are very convenient on Windows with a mouse, less so on a Mac, and unlikely to be found on mobile. You could even just add a button or menuItem "Customize.." that leads to a modal dialog with an interface similar to what we show for the Advanced Cube sample.

[tece321]

Thanks for the reply. Lot to think about, but I understand why you recommend the 'Customize' option. Sorry for using the incorrect terms and any confusion that may have arisen. Yes it is column facet labels that our Users want to hide and unhide. We don't currently use mobile versions of smartGWT so that would not be a problem for our app. In general our users are looking at too much data to be interested in seeing it on a mobile device.

Let us know when the fix is in for facetValueContextClick event.

We like the enhancement for row facet tree labels. We may change to make use of that feature rather than the simpler cube grid of my previous sample.

[Isomorphic]

We made some changes yesterday to address this issue (should be present in the latest nightly build dated February 20).

Regards
Isomorphic Software