PlotKit and Flotr – JavaScript Graphing Solutions

Abhinav — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:54:05 +0000

I’m pretty happy with the Google Charts API but in case you’re looking for even more graphing solutions for your website, there are two that are more advanced:

PlotKit

PlotKit is a Chart and Graph Plotting Library for Javascript. It has support for HTML Canvas and also SVG via Adobe SVG Viewer and native browser support.

Flotr

Flotr comes from Plotr, which itself was derived from Plotkit, here’s the official description:

Flotr is a javascript plotting library based on the Prototype Javascript Framework (version 1.6.0.2 at the moment) and inspired by Flot (written by Ole Laursen).

Flotr enables you to draw appealing graphs in most modern browsers with an easy to learn syntax. It comes with great features like legend support, negative value support, mouse tracking, selection support, zoom support, event hooks, CSS styling support and much more.

Both are nice solutions, PlotKit itself derived from an older library called CanvasGraph. If you know others, do mention them in the comments.

Google Charts API

Abhinav — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:57:50 +0000

This is one of the best tools out that that not many web developers know about. The Google Charts API is a great way to visualize data on the fly. While it doesn’t have too many complex features, it has most of the features most of us would ever need. For example, the Pie Chart below is being dynamically generated with the following URL:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:90,49&chs=400×150&chl=Ideative%20Flux|Dumb%20Fluxes

The following types of charts are available:

I’ve already put it on one test, it powers the stats visualization for player performances on my Indian Premier League application for Facebook.

Abhinav Sharma » google charts

PlotKit and Flotr – JavaScript Graphing Solutions

Google Charts API