What Is The Hex For Transparent Background In Android

Photograph past Christina Rumpf on Unsplash

THE BACKGROUND

A few months ago, Ken and I presented at the combined Australia / New Zealand Tableau User Group. During that presentation, I gave a bunch of examples of how I apply transparent shapes in every viz I create....every one! (I cannot begin to tell you how handy these are - check out my Transparent Shapes weblog post for more than data). During that presentation, there was a lot of talk in the chat window (it was an amazing group) and while I was talking about transparent shapes, Fi Gordon mentioned the transparent hex code. What?????? This, of course, piqued the involvement of both Ken and I and we started digging in.

Through some research, I learned that the transparent hex code is actually fairly common in blueprint tools such as illustrator. You tin can really apply a hex code color that is transparent. The hex code for transparent white (not that the color matters when it is fully transparent) is two zeros followed by white's hex code of FFFFFF or 00FFFFFF. I'll be honest, I tried this in Illustrator (which I am no skilful) and could non get it to work. However, my agreement is that there are additional levels of transparency every bit you can ready them to 10% transparent, 20%, 30%, etc. and each level has it's own hex code.

ACCESSING IT IN TABLEAU

Eager to learn more, I instantly went into Tableau, pulled up the Color Picker and starting typing the code into the hex code field. Unfortunately, it stopped me at 6 characters...because they are hex codes after all, not oct codes!

So, here'south the trick...y'all must create a custom color palette that includes the 8-digit hex and then you apply color from the palette itself. (For more than information on creating a custom color palette in Tableau, check out this aid article.) Beneath is the transparent color palette I created within my preference file. This is only for full transparency; I tried it with all the variations (10%, 20%, thirty%, etc.) but they did non work.

<colour-palette name="Transparent White" type="regular" >

<color>#FFFFFF00</color>

</colour-palette>

Okay, then we've talked almost the fact that nosotros can bring a transparent color into Tableau via the preference file, but how can nosotros use information technology? How might information technology help us? After all, if we want something to exist transparent, why don't nosotros but use the Opacity slider in the color card?

That's a really great question and it pretty much boils downwards to this. What if you lot had two types of marks in one chart and wanted one mark to be 100% opacity (nothing transparency) in ruddy and the other mark to be 0% opacity (100% transparent), how might you accomplish that? Well, I know of one way! The transparent color hex code!

Utilize CASES

So nosotros've talked near the groundwork and conceptually what it tin do, how nigh we break down a couple of use cases. (Truth is, I don't call back I've even scratched the surface on information technology's potential and I'k super excited to run into what this astonishing community will come up with). If you want to follow forth or just want it as a reference, all of the following use cases are in myIntroducing the Transparent Color Hex Code in Tableau workbook on Tableau Public.

Higher up, I chiliadentioned my transparent shapes blog mail. Truth is, the transparent colour hex code tin can oftentimes exist used every bit a replacement for a transparent shape. (I should mention some of these problems tin be solved using "hide" as Ken shows in his our Commonwealth of australia/New Zealand TUG video at 10:20 in. Note that if you hide a marker, you cannot interact with it, which is why I tend to lean on a transparent shape or color over hiding marks).

#ane ISOLATE MARKS IN LINE Nautical chart

Although the following is non in the transparent shapes web log postal service, a version of it is discussed in a presentation that I gave regarding the transparent shape. (You can bank check it out in our Australia/New Zealand TUG video at 51:25 in. The section about transparent shapes in full general starts at 45:27). Imagine we accept a dual axis chart (line and circumvolve marks) that shows sales by month.

Still, we will assume that our chore is focused on Halloween and nosotros want to highlight October sales, like the following:

I think that most people would create a calculation that determines if the month in the chart is equal to Oct and if information technology is, and then yield the sales (note that my calcs are all preceded with an @ symbol):

@October Sales

// If it's October, then yield sales

IF DATEPART('month', [Order Engagement]) = ten

Then [Sales]

Stop

You would then replace i of the pills on the Rows shelf with this calculation.

Merely the truth is, you don't need to replace ane of your dual axis pills with a new pill, and in fact, you don't need to even write this adding at all! Permit'due south offset practise it with a transparent shape.

In the original view, modify the second Sum(Sales) to a shape mark then move Lodge Date to the Shape card. Alter the Order Engagement to reverberate the month (no year) as shown below.

Now simply alter Oct to be a circle shape and everything else to be a transparent shape.

It would work exactly the same with a transparent color, but with one less stride. Leave the marking type a circle as it already was, move Club Engagement to the Color bill of fare. Change the Order Date to reverberate the month (no yr). So simply change October color to be bluish and everything else to exist your transparent color. Your result looks similar the post-obit and will be dynamic.

#two SELECT ANYWHERE ON A MAP

Earlier in the year, I shared my Datafam Detecter. The Datafachiliad Finder allowed people in the Tableau Community to annals their name and general location. They would and so appear as a mark on a globe map. To date, over 400 people have registered world wide. The intention of the Datafam Finder was to allow people to find others in a selected area. For example, let's say that I am taking a business trip to Phoenix, Arizona. I could set a radius of say, 200 km, click on or near Phoenix on the map, information technology would draw a buffer circle and list out everyone within 200 km of where I clicked.

The big flim-flam to this is that I set it up then that y'all can literally click ANYWHERE on the map to select that location. Well, how does that work? Assume you had a information gear up that included 2 customers, one from Chicago, IL United states of america and 1 from Tokyo, Japan. That means there are two marks and I can click on either of those marks. But what if I click on London, England. What would happen? Well, absolutely zip would happen considering there is no mark and no information associated with London, England. Simply in the Datafam Finder, you can absolutely click on London, England or anywhere else for that thing. How did I practise that? Well, I institute a list of every city in the world, loaded it into a Google sheet then substantially unioned that with the list of people who registered. So now there is always a marker for every urban center in the globe.

But I didn't want all the cities to evidence, so you wouldn't be able to come across where the bodily 400+ registrants were located as shown below:

I solved this using a transparent shape...well, about 26,000 transparent shapes. I simply created a calculation that determined what was a registrant and what was a city from the Google sheet. I placed that calculation onto the shape card and so applied a transparent shape to the cities from the Google sail (which I called "Transparent" in the calculation).

I say all of this because nosotros can utilize the transparent color for the verbal same purpose. (Again, yous can check out my Transparent Colour workbook on Tableau Public if you lot want to follow forth).

To follow along, download the original Datafam Finder. Get to the map, go to the shape axis, click the icon next to "Change Option Shape" and change it to Color (rather than Shape) equally shown below. We must do it this way considering there is already another pill on colour. Doing it in this manner will let us to put 2 pills on color - substantially the combination of the 2 of them.

Now just update the colors. We want the urban center that is clicked to be black equally well as any other registrant within the select altitude. We want all other registrants to evidence in cerise. And so anything that is listed as "transparent" is a urban center was from the Google sheet and unselected. That should be the transparent color.

# 3 SHOW Information BEHIND

A few weeks ago, I shared a viz called "Oh the Places We Have Gone". It was inspired by my sis-in-law that has a wooden map hanging in her living room where she has painted each United states state that they have visited every bit a family. And so I, of grade, simply had to build it in Tableau. I decided to practise this individually for each family fellow member every bit well as our family combined. Originally, I merely showed u.s. we had visited in i colour and united states of america nosotros had not visited in some other color...simply that was deadening. I came up with the idea of showing an actual prototype of the family member behind information technology and that person would sort of be revealed as more states were visited. (Creating the image took a chip of graphic work. I created a US map using an culling projection shapefile - the same one I would use for my map, I exported it as an epitome, I fabricated the center of it transparent and the outside of it white, I overlaid it on a photo, then did some cropping to cease upwardly with photos that looked like this). These images would and then be placed behind each map:

It was at this point that I realized I had a problem. My intention was to overlay an bodily map showing the locations we had been (in the above case, the places that my daughter, Addyson, had been). I wanted it all to be semitransparent and then you could sort of see her through all then states, only I wanted us where she had been to be fully transparent...I wanted them to open up up the map. Well, how the heck could I give some states 80% opacity and other states 0% opacity? At that place is no fashion to control opacity with a adding.

I considered just filtering to just bear witness states she had not been, merely that would eliminate any interactivity or tooltip with united states she had been....and I did not want that. I even tooled around with the idea of 2 maps overlaid on height of the paradigm, one that would filter to non-visited states merely and then another on top that was fully transparent for the interactivity and tooltip. But 3 layers, well, I really hated that thought.

And so I had an epiphany! The transparent color would piece of work perfectly! All I did was apply a white color (at 75/% opacity) to the non-visited states and a fully transparent color to united states of america she had visited. It was simple and the event was EXACTLY what I wanted...and in simply 1 canvas. Once more, you tin check out the last viz hither.

#4 SLIDING REFERENCE LINE WITH COLOR

Okay, now for my favorite case of all. When Parameter Actions were released in version 2019.two, I created a pile of examples in my Playing with Parameter Deportment blog post. One of those examples was a sliding reference line. It was dual axis line nautical chart / expanse chart where a parameter action was feeding the date into a parameter. In a adding, that parameter was compared to the actual date in the viz and colored the area nautical chart blue if it was before the date and gray if it was afterward the appointment (meet number 8 in that blog post for the total build). Below is the original gif shown in that blog mail.

When thinking about the transparent hex color, I realized that nosotros could do this slightly differently. We could replace the gray color with a fully transparent color providing a really make clean and clear design (that would also prove annihilation backside it if needed). Using the chart in the to a higher place case, substantially replace the grayness with the transparent hex color code and that's information technology! Information technology is shown below in a slightly different chart, but it was built using the aforementioned general steps. I just dear this ane!

WRAP-UP

And that's all for my examples, simply since I actually wrote this blog post, I've used this fox at least a dozen times, including in my recent Mario Kart viz (to modify Ken'due south coxcomb template for vehicles, tires, and gliders)! As I mentioned higher up, lots of the utilise cases from myTransparent Shapes web log post can likewise exist accomplished using a transparent colour. Simply in general, I think there are a ton more opportunities for this trick. I'thousand really excited to meet all the different use cases that this wonderful customs comes up with. I'm sure you're going to blow people'southward minds!

Before we go...a HUGE thanks toFi Gordon who told us most this in the first place. Cheers, Fi!!!

Thanks for reading!

Introducing the Transparent Color Hex Code in Tableau Reviewed by Kevin Flerlage on January ten, 2022 Rating: 5