Edge Direction (Arrows Not Useful / idea)

[miklevin]

Context: diagnosing dense URL link graphs.

Directionality with URL link graphs is essential. A link to a URL is enormously different than a link from a URL. So each edge possess important direction information that the arrows do not do justice. The arrows are basically useless on a dense link graph. There is not even a benefit of rapidly toggling them on or off or playing with zoom.

The solution seems to be to have one color for the FROM column and another color for the TO column and for each edge to have a gradient from the FROM color to the TO color. I can imagine that well linked-to "hub" URLs would light up with a glow as a result of all the terminating gradiencies. So if it was from TRANSPARENT to WHITE, hub URLs would glow like white stars.

I understand the considerable processing increase this proposes, especially on link graphs with millions of edges (which I do regularly), but I'm hoping the GPUs make this less of a task that it seems. And implementing this would offer something truly unique in the Cosmograph app.

As a bonus you implement a directionality gradient slider so you can tweak the appearance between a more solid line edge and the gradient edges. And as a bonus bonus, you can tweak the gradient velocity as in graphics software.

I hope this makes sense.