As soon as you have coded a document segment, a coding stripe appears in the gray area next to the document in the “Document Browser”. The standard color for this symbol is green, but you can choose another color for any code, causing all the code symbols for this code to appear in this color. The column for the coding stripes can be made bigger or smaller by clicking on the separator between the column headers and dragging to the right or left. Double-clicking on the column separator reduces the column to ist the smallest optimal size. This optimal view can be impractical, though, if you have too many coded segments. In such cases, the text will be made so small that you won’t be able to read it easily.

You can also choose whether code names should be shown in the coding stripe column. By right-clicking in the gray area of the column, you will call up a window with various setting options. One of those options is to Display code names.

You will always be able to see the code name in the tooltip that appears if you hover your mouse over the coding stripe. The tooltip also shows you the assigned weight, the author of the coded segment, and the date that the segment was coded.

This tooltip always displays the complete code name, even if it is a subcode. This is significant, because the coding stripes in the column only show the name of the codes, rather than including the codes that they are subcodes of. In other words, the code “Interests” is a subcode of “Day-to-Day Issues,” but that is only visible in the tooltip, not in the coding stripe column (see above). In the tooltip, it is shown as “Day-to-Day Issues \ Interests”.

If there are many coded segments, it can also be difficult to figure out exactly which codename belongs to which coding stripe. This can be immediately identified when you move the mouse over a coding stripe, at which moment the code name will appear brighter and the code assignment will be displayed.

Coding stripe column visualization options

By right-clicking in the coding stripe column, you can call up a window with various settings for the visualization of coded segments in the coding stripe column:

Here you can adjust the following settings:

• You can choose to only visualize activated codes.
• You can choose to visualize coded segments created by certain users.
• You can choose to only visualize coded segments of a certain color.
• You can choose whether to change the text color of the text in the document to match the color of the code it was coded with.
• As mentioned before, you can choose whether the code name should be shown or not.
• Finally, you can choose whether the tooltips should include the information about the author and date of creation.
• Display or hide emoticodes.
• Always display coded Areas in images

The option to switch off codes with selected colors is particularly useful when you are working in a team with independent coders. In this case, the coders should be defined as codes on the highest level of the code hierarchy and the different coders should use the same code tree organized as subcodes of the coders. Now, while the training the coders, you can hide the visualization of other coders’ work. Later on, they can compare their coding with the coding done by the others.

The option to color the text according to code colors only makes sense if you do not have many overlapping codes. Overlapping codes cause the color of the text to be a mix of those overlapping codes, which can make it very difficult to interpret.

Listing codes assigned to a segment

Often it's useful to determine which codes are assigned to a specific text or image excerpt. To do this, select a text segment or image section and select List assigned codes in the context menu.

This will display a menu in which all assigned codes are listed. Click on an entry in the list to highlight the code in the “Code System.”