Announcing VUE 3.0

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 03/11/2011 12:18:55

Dear VUE Community,

The VUE Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of VUE 3. This release represents an ambitious effort to bring new and innovative data visualization tools to our core concept-mapping environment while continuing to improve and refine the usability and performance of our existing features.

VUE 3 has been made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the efforts of the Academic Technology Group at Tufts University, insightful input from many application users, and the work of our volunteer translators.

At the heart of VUE 3 is a new set of data discovery and exploration tools. Information visualization begins with importing data, and with VUE 3.0 users can now import XML documents, RSS feeds and CSV files into the newly designed content panel. Each data set is listed as a separate resource under the dataset tab of the content panel. Columns of a CSV file and unique elements of XML documents appear as high-level nodes within the data tree.

To facilitate the exploration of maps, we have also created a new panel called Exploration Tools. The Extended Selection tool enables you to extend the selection from one node to other linked nodes by depth of connection and the Opacity tool affects the opacity of the non-selected node and links in a map to reduce visual noise. In addition to the existing interactive zoom tool in VUE, VUE 3.0 includes an automatic zoom feature for selected items. All of these new features in the Exploration Tool panel give the user more automation in highlighting specific content, especially for large and complex maps.

With VUE 3, a map can be quickly built out by selecting a node and triggering a query of selected resources. Results are placed on the map using one of VUE’s new automated layouts, designed to assist users in interacting and organizing with their data.

Continuing to build on VUE's history of integration with other tools valuable to scholarly research, we’ve included two additional features in this release. These features demonstrate our understanding of the importance of digital information and published resources in scholarly activity, as well as the many associated tasks of structuring and managing digital content. These features reflect the preferences and activities of today’s scholars. 1) We have developed a framework in VUE to call SEASR (http://seasr.org) flows and augment the outcome of these flows with the working map. 2) We have created a plug-in for Firefox to allow users to map their Zotero collections in VUE using new dataset features.

VUE 3 also provides notable improvements in performance with a completely redesigned image rendering architecture. VUE can now handle large number of digital images while using only a fraction of the memory required in VUE 2.

Finally, VUE 3 introduces localization of the VUE user interface. VUE is currently available localized for French, Greek, Italian and Portuguese, with partial translations available in Bulgarian, Chinese, German, Hungarian, Russian and Spanish. If you are interested in translating VUE to another language, or in helping us complete the partial translations, please let us know in our user forums.

VUE 3 can be downloaded by visiting http://vue.tufts.edu As with previous VUE releases, versions of VUE are available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. VUE is Open Source, available at no cost, and released under the Education Community License Version 2.0.

With so many new features in VUE 3, we wanted to provide some resources to help users get started exploring what VUE 3 can do. Building on the success of the community webinars we held during the VUE 3 development cycle, we’ve released a number of demonstration videos to show off some of VUE 3’s new features here: http://www.youtube.com/VUEProject We’ve also improved the user guide and moved it online: http://vue.tufts.edu/help/index.cfm As always the best place to interact with the VUE community and share tips and ideas for using VUE is on our forums at http://vue-forums.uit.tufts.edu

As we move beyond VUE 3, VUE’s continued growth and success will depend on the engagement and support of the VUE community. If you are interested in contributing to VUE in any way, please let us know. Our project, like many other open source efforts, grows largely through the community’s effort to spread the word. We encourage everybody to spread the word by submitting stories about VUE and your use of it, creating screencasts and screenshots showing off your favorite features and making use of your favorite social networking sites to reach new users. Additionally, VUE is always in need of programmers looking to take on tasks both large and small. New users often seek advice from expert users in the VUE forums, consider sharing your knowledge and experience with others in our online forums. Help us build the VUE community by participating in some way.

Thank you,

The VUE Team

dead links ! and in the mail too alas !

One day I will remember not to end sentences in a URL. Fixed above.

Thank you very much! I appreciate especially the enhanced layout features.
Sometime I read in the Forum about an application for a 'time-line' arrangement of nodes, but I cannot find it anymore. Maybe something to think about for VUE 4.

Thank you VUE team!

Is there available a down loadable version of the User Guide?

Thanks, this is much appreciated !

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 03/15/2010 12:23:18

"Is there available a down loadable version of the User Guide?"

We moved away from the PDF version of a user guide for the following reasons:

By maintaining the online user manual, translators can work from the latest documentation by obtaining a copy of the up-to-date English wiki

As we insert new pages in the English wiki, our goal is for copies of those pages to be automatically inserted in the translated wikis, alerting translators that additional content has been created and is ready for translation

Finally, although we have launched VUE 3, we are still fixing and tweaking things and trying to keep our user guide up to date. We cannot at this time dedicate additional resources to maintain an up-to-date PDF version of the online user guide

We are sorry to see that Confluence, the wiki platform for our user guide, has removed its "Export to PDF" feature in its latest version. :-(
We might consider bringing back a "getting started" PDF to explain basic features, since these features are less likely to change. Would that help?

Please reconsider the decision regarding no downloadable document.

Not everyone has a fast internet connection. Trying to read the Vue user guide online is like slow tai chi, for me.

I understand the need for the document to be updated and available. Would you consider
making available a downloadable file of an older version? It would help a beginner like me
get up to speed, then view the selected new pages online.

Thanks,

Hi Kwee Tan

Maybe a solution is to use a web-copier and make a local copy of the webpages. This solves the problem you indicated.
A good web-copier tool is eg http://www.httrack.com/

Hi Fred,

Thanks for the suggestion. I used a command line tool called wget, with the same/similar functionality.

The problem is that https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/VUEUserGuide is not a static
document tree, and confluence generates a display each time the user clicks on the topics.
That probably adds to the perceived delay after each click. So, the download fails to capture
the user guide except for the current page, for off line browsing.

If there is a URL to the full and static user guide pages, that'll work.

Thanks,

Hi,

Here is a link to the original VUE 2 PDF documentation. This should help get those struggling with bandwidth issues through some of the problems until we have an offline version of the VUE 3 docs.

http://vue.tufts.edu/help/userguide-english.cfm

Hope this helps,

Mike

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the 2.0 document. My google search was not very successful in locating it.

The basic VUE stuff should be the same, so 2.0 should help me get started.

Thanks,this is much appreciated !!!!

Would love to see some integration with Google Docs ...and Google Chrome... Especially since they are big on education.

I love your software and use it all the time!