Hello

So I have this JTable subclass with all my own renderers for visualizing microarray data - basically mimicking a spreadsheet, but highly interactive.  I have renderers for everything but the scrollbar.

My users want to intoduce filters to the data and I'm trying to brainstorm ideas for making it clear, visually, that fitlers are either currently being used, or not.

Here's a screenshot:



( in this picture, columns of interest have been grouped on the right and uninteresting columns are faded out.  The two existing filters are shown in red above the context and p-value columns )

You can see I have two filters already, and I think they are pretty clear and apparent.  My question to everyone is how should I show that a filter not associated with a column is in use?  One boring answer is to use the status window at the bottom.  *yawn*  At the moment, I'm considering a white, matching widget underneath the table with filter information.

Not looking for any code, just some pretty ideas using Java2D and custom widgets.  Thanks!