Having a presentation-quality chart or text displayed by your .NET application is important, but often this is not enough to build a really useful program. What you may need sometimes is information passed from the component to the program that drives it.
The nature of this information can vary from a simple tooltip to an event, but what these actions all have in common is that the component initiates them, and the program simply decides whether to respond in some way or just to ignore it. Building interactive Web applications is out of the scope of this book, although the techniques for applying tooltips and cursors are the same in both cases. For more detailed information on how to generate interactive Web content, consult the HTML Image Map and HTML Image Map with Postback topics in the Building Web Applications book.
Interactivity in Windows Forms applications is controlled by adding objects to the InteractivityOperations property of the ChartControl object. This collection may contain objects from certain types as described in the following table:
| Object | Description |
| TrackballDragOperation | When present in the collection, instructs the control to modify the active chart's Rotation and Elevation parameters when the user presses the left mouse button and moves the mouse over the control window. This operation is exclusive, which means that it cannot be combined with other interactivity operations. |
| OffsetDragOperation | Instructs the control to modify the active chart's offset from the center of the margin area when the user presses the left mouse button and drags the mouse. This operation is exclusive, which means that it cannot be combined with other interactivity operations. |
| ZoomDragOperation | Instructs the control to modify the active chart's Zoom parameter when the user presses the left mouse button and drags the mouse. Moving the mouse toward the control's top edge zooms in and moving the mouse toward the bottom edge zooms out. This operation is exclusive, which means that it cannot be combined with other interactivity operations. |
| TooltipInteractivityOperation | The chart will display tooltips for the various chart elements that have an attached Interactivity or SeriesInteractivity object. Can be combined with CursorChangeInteractivityOperation. |
| CursorChangeInteractivityOperation | The chart will change the mouse cursor when the user moves the mouse over different elements with attached Interactivity or SeriesInteractivity object. Can be combined with TooltipInteractivityOperation. |
| DataCursorTool | Allows the developer to synchronize the values of const lines with the mouse coordinates converted to axis coordinates. Works with both GDI+ and OpenGL render devices and does not depend on the applied projection. |
| DataPanTool |
Allows the developer to scroll the chart contents using the mouse when the chart axes are configured to use paging (which is the case after a Data Zoom operation, for example). This feature works with both the GDI+ and OpenGL devices and does not depend on the applied projection. |
| DataZoomTool |
Allows the axis paging of a selected set of axes to be synchronized with a rectangular area specified with the mouse. This feature works with both the GDI+ and OpenGL devices and does not depend on the applied projection. |
The topics in the following book (Drag Operations) discuss each of these objects and the operations performed in detail.
In addition to providing interactivity through these objects, Xceed Chart for WinForms can handle mouse events.
Related Examples
Windows Forms: Interactivity\Drag Operations; Interactivity\Mouse Events; Interactivity\Tooltips and Cursors