Cookies

We use cookies to understand how the website is being used and to ensure you get the best possible experience.
By continuing to use this site, you consent to this policy. About cookies

Learn About Our Latest Mapping Features

TUESDAY, JUL 18, 2017

Check out the new features that will help you get even more out of Social Explorer. We began shifting our mapping platform from Flash to HTML5 for a fully responsive, fast and flexible user experience for computers, tablets and mobile. UK Census data is already available in HTML5, and we just publish the USA demography HTML5 map. Read on to find out more about our new HTML5 map tools.

Highlight Locations with Our New Masking Tool

Our new masking tool lets you focus on specific areas of a map to guide the viewer and make your presentations pop. Select the tracts, districts, ZIP codes, counties or states you want to spotlight and then gray out the surrounding area. You can either click each area you want to mask, or you can use the square or circle selection tool to select multiple areas at once.


HTML5 map masking tool

Data will be visible only inside the masked area, whereas the grayed out area will display only its geography and none of the variables displayed in the masked area. Any additional map settings you enabled or disabled will also be applied just to the masked area.

Try the New Interactive Legend

Dig deeper into your maps with our new interactive legend. Hover your mouse over a data color in the legend to spotlight the areas on the map in that data range. For example, this lets you quickly focus on the tracts with the highest income or lowest population density without getting distracted by other groupings on the map. 



HTML5 map interactive legend

Improved Legend Cut-Points

We also improved the process of customizing the legend. Cut-points are used to cluster a set of values in such a way that the values in the same group are more similar to each other than to those in other groups. Each group is represented by a single color on the map. In addition to using the automatically created natural breaks, quantile cut-points, and creating cut-points by category or in equal interval, our users can now manually type in cut-point values.

We tweaked the slider itself to make setting the right values easier. Our users can now enter the exact numeric value instead of dragging the slider until it hits the right value. Sliders now behave more naturally, and selecting values is considerably easier. We also positioned all the slider handles vertically for easier navigation. The handles will no longer overlap, even when multiple sliders are set to the same value.



HTML5 map cutpoints editor

Save and Reuse Your Reports


Users can now save maps to their individual accounts. Just like you can save maps and map projects to your “My Projects” tab, now you can save your custom reports. This feature helps you save, share and modify your reports with ease.



Manage and Save reports

Additional Information Is Just A Click Away

All information for map variables is now just a click away. Learn about the survey, definitions and computations behind any variable on the map by clicking on the “i” button. For more detailed explanations, click on the “Open Data Dictionary” button for the full documentation.



HTML5 map additional information for table and variables


Visit our HTML5 maps to get started with these new features today.

Data insights are waiting to be uncovered
Get Started

Already using Social Explorer? Log in.