Adding Display Components

Watson Explorer Engine provides a display named velocity-display as a suggested starting point for the displays that you create for your applications. This display provides pre-selected display options, popular settings, and common-used display components to simplify creating attractive, usable displays.

Display components provide sets of functionality that can be used in a display. The previous section discussed how to disable display components that are already part of a display but which you may not want to use. This section explains how to add components to a display.

The velocity-display display is based on a basic display named core-display, to which a number of display components have been added. The display components that are used in the default velocity-display are the following:

• About Page - provides a simple "About This Application" page that enables you to supply custom information about a specific Watson Explorer Engine application that will be visible to any user of that application or only to users that are logged in to the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool. To access this page, you must have enabled the About entry in the Header Links section of your display, which you can set on the Theme > Advanced portion of your application's display.

  You can customize the heading of this page and the text that it contains by selecting the XSL tab, selecting Page Component from the popup dialog that displays, selecting the About Content template, and clicking Add. This displays an About Content text area. After making your changes, click OK to save your changes and finish editing this text area, click Apply to save your changes and continue editing, or click Cancel to discard any unsaved changes (including the About Content component itself if you have not yet saved any changes).

• Advanced Search - provides a link to more advanced search options in the upper right corner of the search page.

  To display an advanced search link on your search page. go to the Theme > Advanced portion of your application's display. Click edit so you can make changes to the settings. Scroll down to the Header Links section. Click the Modified radio button, if it is not already selected. Select the checkbox beside advanced. Click OK to save your changes.

  Note: Using a source form that has been configured with required content elements is not supported as an advanced search source for the advanced search form.
• Cache Display - provides a menu item for each search result that enables you to view the cached version of any document that is returned as a search result. This cached copy enables you to view a document as it existed when the location or site where that document is stored was last crawled. If the original document is inaccessible from a browser, such as if a document has been deleted or moved since the location or site where it is stored was last crawled, viewing the cached version of a document can be the only way to view that document.
• Clusters - displays clusters as a separate, tree-structured navigational component in the display of your search results.
• Debugging Information - provides the ability for an administrative Watson Explorer Engine user to turn on debugging for a Watson Explorer Engine application in order to see additional information for each search results page and document For more information about the debug screen and debugging in general, see Using the Watson Explorer Engine Debug Screen.
• Front Page - provides a basic web page with a more prominent search area that users can access to submit queries to your application.

  You can customize this page by selecting the XSL tab, clicking the Add XSL button, selecting Page Component from the popup dialog that displays, selecting the Front Page template, and clicking Add. This displays a Body text area. After making your changes, click OK to save your changes and finish editing this text area, click Apply to save your changes and continue editing, or click Cancel to discard any unsaved changes (including the Front Page > Body component itself if you have not yet saved any changes).

• Help Page - provides a simple Help page that explains basic and advanced usage of a Watson Explorer Engine application. To access this page, you must have enabled the Help entry in the Header Links section of your display, which you can set on the Theme > Advanced portion of your application's display.

  You can customize the heading of this page and the text that it contains by selecting the XSL tab, clicking the Add XSL button, selecting Page Component from the popup dialog that displays, selecting the Help Content template, and clicking Add. This displays a Help Content text area. After making your changes, click OK to save your changes and finish editing this text area, click Apply to save your changes and continue editing, or click Cancel to discard any unsaved changes (including the Help Content component itself if you have not yet saved any changes).

• Refinements - also referred to as a type of structured navigation, this display component provides a tree-oriented or graphical display of search results based on the value of one or more fields that are common to the search results. The structured navigation component is only displayed when search results are retrieved from search collections in which refinements have been configured. The default sources from which search results are retrieved in this tutorial use meta-search sources for which refinements have not been implemented, so the structured navigation component is not visible in the examples in this tutorial.
• Remix Clustering - adds a remix link to the clusters navigational element. This enables you to create new clusters based on an existing set of search results, providing additional insights into related information in those results.
• Spelling Correction - displays spelling corrections for your search terms, if available and applicable. Your project must have the query.pre-selected-sources variable set to a valid spelling correction source (such as the vivisimo-spelling-correction spelling correction source that is provided with Watson Explorer Engine) in order to perform spelling corrections.

Other display components are also available that are not pre-integrated with the default velocity-display master display. These are the following:

• Annotations - provides the ability to add and edit contents (annotations) to documents in a vse search collection.
• Calendar Widget for Advanced Form Date Fields - adds calendar picker widgets for the Start Date and End Date fields on the advanced search form.
• Cluster Subsearch - adds the ability to search within the clusters that have been produced during the previous search
• Document Exporting - adds checkboxes and an associated menu that enable you to export search results in a variety of formats, including the ability to add them to shared folders, if those are enabled in your application. For more information about adding this component, supported export formats, and so on, see Exporting Search Results.
• Query Expansion - Conceptual Search - adds display components that enable you to expand existing queries based on suggestions derived from an ontology or from the clusters that have been generated in response to a query.
• Refinement Selector Dialog - adds an option to show fewer refinements per binning set and adds a more link that enables you to select from all binning sets via a large popup dialog with auto-complete assistance. This selector is especially useful for hierarchical refinement sets or refinements with hundreds or thousands of values.
• Search History - adds the ability to see and re-issue recent searches for the current user.
• Sorting Options - adds support for showing and selecting additional ways of sorting results in the Watson Explorer Engine display. For information about using the display component, see Adding Graphical Sort Options.
• Tabbed Spotlights - adds a tabbed display for boosted nodes.
• Theme - Citron - adds an alternate theme to your display, providing a different look for Watson Explorer Engine applications that use it.
  Important: This theme is presented an example of display customization and should not be considered as a completed alternative to the default display. It may not be suitable for use with other display customization features such as document export. All display customizations are intended for use with the default display only.
• Theme - Velo - adds an alternate theme to your display that contains rounded search tabs and a nice gradient search intro bar that can be set to any color. Adding this theme provides a different look for Watson Explorer Engine applications that use it.
  Important: This theme is presented an example of display customization and should not be considered as a completed alternative to the default display. It may not be suitable for use with other display customization features such as document export. All display customizations are intended for use with the default display only.