On-line:
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Tables and Charts
Bridge includes a table tool and a chart tool that will let you enter and chart data. These are currently fairly limited, but we will be improving them over the course of the project. As with everything else in the system, your feedback is welcomed!
Data Table objects are simple spreadsheets in which you can enter data. Here's an example:
| Date | Ammonia | Phosphates | Alkalinity | Hardness | Iron | pH |
| 12.16.01 | nd | 0.07 | 30 | 40 | 0.36 | 6.9 |
| 4.26.02 | nd | 0.06 | 40 | 40 | 0.02 | 6.3 |
Steps:
- In the full editor, go to the site (folder) where you want to put the table, choose "Add to..." from the "File" menu, select "Objects", then select "Blank Data Table". This will create a new object named "Untitled Data Table".
- Select "Untitled Data Table" and then select "Rename..." from the "File" menu. In this example I changed the name to "Small pond data".
- Double-click the table object and enter your data.
- To add the table to a web page, open the page and add the name of the table enclosed in backslashes. In this example I added "\Small pond data\".
As with everything else in Bridge, Table Objects can be edited collaboratively and changes are reflected immediately on the web. Versions are also saved.
Once you have created a table you can use the chart tool to produce charts of the data. For example:
Note that the charting tools are still even rougher than the data table, so some of the procedures for creating them may change as we improve the tools:
- In the same site as the data table, choose "Add to..." from the "File" menu, select "Experimental Objects", and then choose "Blank Chart". (This will graduate from "Experimental Objects" when we've had a chance to make some improvements to it.)
- Click "Create" to make a new object named "Untitled Chart". In this example I selected it an renamed it "Small Pond Alkalinity".
- Double-click the chart to open it.
- By default, new charts have a built-in table in which data can be entered. In this case, however, we want to pull data from an existing table. To do this, choose "Edit chart configuration..." from the "Data" menu. In this example I:
- Selected "Use data from another object" and made sure "Small pond data" was selected.
- Set the rows to from 2 to 3.
- Set the columns to "A" and "D", with labels "Date" and "Alkalinity" respectively.
- To put the chart to a web page, add its name enclosed in backslashes. In this case I added "\Small Pond Alkalinity\".
You can create multiple charts for the same data table. For example, here's bar graph of the pH from the same table:
To make this chart I opened the full editor and:
- Made a copy of the Alkalinity Chart (by selecting it, choosing "Duplicate..." from the file menu, and then renaming the copy).
- Opened the copy and changed the type from "Line" to "Vertical bar".
- Selected "Edit chart configuration..." from the "Data" menu and changed the column from D to G and the label from "Alkalinity" to "pH".
- Added "\Small Pond pH\" to the web page.