Place the legend anywhere within a visualization

@Peter Hello !
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@Manuel Hello ! and thank you for your comment.
In Spotfire 12 we implemented a partial solution enabling to gain screen space by displaying legend items horizontally in a visualization, move it on top or at bottom, aligned left, center or right.

For placing a legend freely within a visualization (floating legend), I would encourage to vote for the following idea: https://ideas.tibco.com/ideas/TS-I-7794

I have seen many pages highlighting the Spotfire 12 release but everything I am finding on the TIBCO Spotfire pages seems not to be updated yet.

Tobias - while this is a welcomed enhancement, the original threat related to placing the legend within the visual. I believe you are saying we can position the legend on any of the sides of the visual, not within it. Can you confirm?

this is specific to maps but it would be great to put the legend as a layer on the map to provide the legend info without taking away space from the map.. often i am losing precious map view space thanks to the legend which is mostly empty space vertically

I keep hearing how PowerBI looks better than Spotfire and one of the key reasons is that it uses a horizontal legend which has far better utilisation of the whitespace. Without this, visualisations in Spotfire are smaller and harder to see.

Perhaps adding a "Display only legend" would be good. For working on the visualisations, the legend as it is suits me well. However, especially for exporting charts to images, it's not good at all. So perhaps an additional legend which can be placed/scaled freely and only Displays colors, shapes etc. would be a good solution.

Hi Niklas -- agree with your thought of limiting the column selector functionality when the legend is moved from the left/right position.

Hi Niklas,

I think you're on to something with the idea to have the legend focus on the meaning of the colors when it's moved from the default position.

There's some tough decisions with this enhancement request since the legend displays so much information and also allows for interaction. Perhaps it would be possible to arrange each "category" (color, size, marker, etc...) in the legend separately to arrive at an ideal legend location?

For example, I could see colors being placed in the visualization or immediately below the category axis to provide context and other legend items, such as lines and curves, size by, etc..., being placed to the left or right (as is currently default behavior)

I'd be happy to discuss this more as this topic comes up frequently with our clients but there are many intricacies to think through that may be hard to convey over text.

Curt

I'm also a little unclear what you're asking Niklas. If you mean would it be good to have a 'user-facing' vs 'development' legend then yes, I think that would be good. A configurable, floating (or moveable, at least), user-facing, static key showing colour, size and shape would make it easier to create slick looking visualisations. And if they can be horizontally spread, all the better.

Hello

If you mean having a floating legend or a horizontal one, yes I think this is a good idea.

Michelle Lacy

I have a question to the community related to this Idea: In Spotfire the legend serves two purposes - presentation of the colors meaning and as a quick way of configuring color, shape etc through the column selectors. I can see that in horizontal legend layouts, space would easily be very tight if we include column selectors.

Does the community think it would be OK to focus floating or horizontal layouts on presenting the meaning of the colors rather than configuration of the plot?

There would also be a lot of value added for use in mobile deployment of dashboards.  Currently most iPhone (or favorite device) screens would make reviewing anything that contains a color and shape applied pretty painful.  See attached artistic rendering.  Floating legend opens up many new possibilities in dash boarding.

Yep - what Neil said.

Would be nice to have the option to show the percentages (or values) in the legend next to the slices's names. (TS-I-5613 Pie chart legend with percentage)

Basically, give the same legend options as Excel

Yes, I totally agree with Neill post. it would be great if we can place the Legend values Horizontally on Top or Bottom of the visualization.

It also needs to allow word-wrapping on the legend, so that one of the legends which is really long does not force the entire legend area to be stretched out.

To add to this, allow the legend to be layed out horizontally, so that it can stretch entirely out along the top or bottom of the viz.