Crosstalk is a package that allows packages that create html-based widgets to talk to each other in an R Markdown document. Examples of HTML widgets include interactive charts, maps, and data tables. Crosstalk connects these components to each other by having them pull from a shared dataset. Crosstalk also offers a few interactive filter functions. For basic data exploration, Crosstalk may offer an easier alternative than Shiny, and the output of Crosstalk is simple HTML, which does not require a special server for sharing like Shiny apps do.