Friday, August 18th, 2006
Ajax Charting System
If you’ve been scouring the web looking for a pure Ajax charting solution, you might want to check out this offering from WebFX, a simple, free, easy to use charting system with multiple chart types included.
In web applications developed now days a lot of the logic that previously resided on the server side is now being implemented on the client side. This is especially true for information presentation, components such as trees and columnlist makes it possible for users to interact with the application, or web site if you wish, without contacting the server. However the ability to present data in a graphic rather than textual format has been quite limited, unless a plugin is used or an image is requested from the server.
That’s where this component comes in to place, it allows various forms of charts to be created, without any additional plugin, and without using images.
You can see an example of the charting in action in this demo showing line, bar, and combo graphs from generated data. There’s even documentation, usage examples and an API interface provided as well.
Nice technology but one is still forced to generate the charts on the server side because of the poor printing support for Canvas or SVG/VML in current browsers.
I could be mistaken, but I think the author moved to PlotKit. I know he switched his canvas implementation. Anyway, PlotKit produces prettier output.
As far as i’ve seen, it has nothing to do with AJAX.
It’s a great usage of Canvas or SVG, though.
Stick ‘Ajax’ with anything and you’ve got endless hype!
I always been a fan of WebFX (and Emil)!!
I’ve been using this chat widget for some time and it works great! Easy to use e fast (at least for an intranet application)
Pity it doesn’t do pie chart though..
Nice charting script… the serious problem with most of these charting solutions is that they don’t print well …or at all.
and in business apps, most user want to print those charts.
Recently when I need to add chart to HTML site, I were considering PlotKit in first place. However, the large amount of external dependencies (Dojo, IE Canvas emulation), large JS files, non-existing interactivity and doubtful compatibility across browsers put me back to safe old Flash solution.
JS+HTML charts are cool show-cases, but are not production-ready, IMO.
VS
I would recommend XML/SWF charts: it uses swf files as a basis and an xml file as a data source. See http://www.maani.us/xml_charts/index.php and take a look at the examples, they look much better than this solution. It’s free if you don’t mind that clicking the graph leads to their website.
Printing Canvas
Since I first started with IE Canvas the number one request has been printing support. The same applies to the successor, ExplorerCanvas and the WebFX Chart component.
In fact about 90% of the mails I’ve received about these projects has been abo…
How exactly is this “Ajax”? I don’t think there’s anything related to Ajax or remote scripting being used here by Erik/Emil.
one gotcha check out visifire if looking for a chart control. it is silverlight charting component & has some great animations. it is making news under open source hood
You can get flash level of sophistication with AJAX only. check out style chart.