Framing your analysis using text areas

Spotfire's text area, though not strictly a visualization, is as important as any of the visualizations on your analysis page. In terms of insertion on the page and maneuvering within the layout, the text area behaves exactly the same way as a visualization, so treat it as one.

In its simplest form, the text area can be used simply to add some text to support your analysis: a title and brief description or some usage instructions. You can enter text plainly or take advantage of the text area's underlying HTML base for more sophisticated presentations. If you don't know much about HTML, the W3Schools website (http://www.w3schools.com/html/) is an excellent starting point. It's not that difficult to pick up some basic techniques.

The text area is much more than just a text area. In a text area, you can embed property controls such as input fields or drop-down menu controls. You can also embed calculated values, images, URLs to external content, action buttons, filters, and some simple visualization elements.

We will create a text area in the next example and use it to configure the KPI chart. Before we get to that, however, we need to introduce the concepts of Custom Expressions, Document Properties, and Property Controls.