[Lens] Synchronize cursor Popup for X-axis across all Lens visualizations in a dashboard

[matschaffer]

Description of feature

#77530 introduced a synchronized cursor position for all Lens graphs in a dashboard.

This is a great step forward, but it'd be also good to have (possibly configurable) synchronized popups as well.

Without the popups, the best a viewer can do is visually guess at the likely Y axis value for a given point.

This is okay for one or two lines, but would definitely get more challenging as more lines appear on the graph, or if the point of interest is a subtle change relative to the Y-axis scale.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-vis-editors (Team:VisEditors)

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-presentation (Team:Presentation)

[ghudgins]

@flash1293 - @elastic/datavis wants the redesign of the tooltip elastic/elastic-charts#615 before we enable this. We're going to need to do this soon regardless because of some of the other 8.x plans.

[matschaffer]

As an additional data point I noticed recently that you can also lose the lens cursor depending on your mouse position on the X axis.

This really confused me for a bit when I handed on a "bad" mouse point by accident and was surprised to not see the cursor on the other graph.

Here's a recording where you can see the shared cursor only kicking in when I'm (I think) near the bucket start then disappearing when I move off it a little while the popup and point circle remain.

[stratoula]

@flash1293 - @elastic/datavis wants the redesign of the tooltip elastic/elastic-charts#615 before we enable this. We're going to need to do this soon regardless because of some of the other 8.x plans.

@ghudgins also I think that the pie tooltip redesign elastic/elastic-charts#623 can be considered as a blocker for the removal of the vislib pie.

[flash1293]

@matschaffer Thanks for reporting this - it seems like the cursor is hidden behind the grid line. I think it's this bug which is already in the process of getting fixed: elastic/elastic-charts#1283 cc @markov00

[stratoula]

@flash1293 @ghudgins this setting is going to be off or on by default?

[markov00]

IMHO this should be off by default (1st because of the breaking change in the UX, 2nd to due to the high increase of noise in the dashboard UX where suddenly all the charts now are showing tooltip "flags" all-around creating a very noisy experience, consider that we also got some users asking to remove completely the tooltip to avoid such noise when exploring a dashboard).
This configuration should contain 3 options:

1. no sync (only the chart with the mouse over it will show the tooltip)
2. sync only the cursor (the current chart will show the tooltip, all the others just the cursor)
3. sync and show tooltip everywhere.

I'm saying that because in some cases, like in TSVB and in Timelion, the legend already reflects the value of the current cursor (independently from the fact that the cursor is the original one or the synched one) so in this case, you don't really need the tooltip "flags" moving around on every chart to replicate the same information you already have on the legend.

[stratoula]

@markov00 yes I agree with being off by default tbh. This is how I implemented it I just wanted to be certain that this is what we agreed on our planning.

About the second one sync only the cursor (the current chart will show the tooltip, all the others just the cursor). This feature already exists, it is always on and there is no switch to close it.

Is this something that we want to change?

[markov00]

About the second one sync only the cursor (the current chart will show the tooltip, all the others just the cursor). This feature already exists, it is always on and there is no switch to close it.

I know, I was only listing what, in my opinion, should be the capabilities available at the dashboard level. point 2 is what it is today, point 3 is what you have added, point 1 is an interesting option that is currently not available, but available by our competitors

[ghudgins]

I agree with @markov00 - keep defaults as they are today. Performance being another motivation to add to his list.

no sync (only the chart with the mouse over it will show the tooltip)

if it's easy I agree this could be valuable (a user who doesn't want any distraction, a user who wants optimal browser performance). Feels like we should make an issue for it though to give it a bit of thought

[stratoula]

Yes I think that is needs to be discussed as the current behavior of the cursor sync is always on and cant be turned off. Turning it off by default will be a change in the current behavior so I can create a discuss issue for this tomorrow.

For the current issue we are going to handle the 3rd one sync and show tooltip everywhere. with the default state set to false.