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Charts And Graphs: Modern Solutions

October 18th, 2007 in Developer's Toolbox | 91 Comments

Charts are supposed to visualize data in order to give a more profound understanding of the nature of a given problem or recent developments. Whatever type of data presentation you prefer (pie charts, bubble charts, bar graphs, network diagrams etc.), you can create charts in graphic editors manually or use special desktop-software instead. In both cases you have a major problem: once you’d like to update an old chart, or create a new one, you have to run the application and create new images over and over again. That’s not flexible. That’s also not usable — e.g. if you’d like to update your chart live.

Server-based solutions, implemented with Flash, JavaScript or pure CSS, offer a more flexible alternative. In fact, since Flash offers significant advantages over static data presentation with CSS and JavaScript, most solutions use it for dynamic data visualization. The data itself is often stored in XML-files which are loaded and updated via PHP or ASP. The price range varies enormously — depending on the flexibility and level of customization you’d like to have. However, if you don’t want to pay, you don’t have to — there are powerful free solutions as well.

If you use Ajax- or JavaScript-frameworks you might already have powerful chart components integrated into the library by default. If it’s not the case, you might try to search for existing add-ons. E.g. there are extensions for jQuery and Dojo you can use to generate and style your own charts with few lines of JavaScript and CSS.

The Dojo Charting Engine can generate graphs and charts with few JavaScript snippets.

Many server-based solutions are quite versatile, so you can use them to create a variety of charts and graphs in minutes. However, to use these tools you need to know where to find them.

This article presents an overview of tools, applications and techniques for visualizing data in charts and graphs. Among other things both free and commercial chart tools, services, desktop-applications and web-based solutions (Flash, JavaScript, CSS) — you can use them on your server — are presented.

Please notice that the solutions listed below don’t necessarily produce charts which serve the main purpose of data visualization — namely, to provide an easy-to-use visual presentation of (possibly) complex data sets. It’s far more important that the presented information is usable and comprehensible rather than presented in a visually appealing way. Outstanding data visualizations aren’t achieved by the beauty of data presentation, but by an effective interpretation of the data it represents.

Charts and Graphs: Flash-based Solutions

FusionCharts Free
FusionCharts Free is a Flash charting component that can be used to render data-driven & animated charts for web applications and presentations. It is a cross-browser and cross-platform solution that can be used with ASP.NET, ASP, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails, simple HTML pages or PowerPoint Presentations to deliver interactive and powerful flash charts.

You can generate 2D/3D Column Charts, Line Charts, 2D/3D Pie & Doughnut Charts, Area Charts, Stacked Charts, Combination Charts and Candlestick Charts. The data is stored in XML. The full version of the application has more animated charts, visual effects (shadow, glow etc.) as well as a Visual XML Generator Utility. You don’t need to know anything about Flash to use FusionCharts. All you need to know is the language you’re programming in. Free version provides a high level of flexibility and dozens of impressive designs.

amCharts
amCharts offers a flexible and easily customizable solution for generating charts “on the fly”. There are 4 sets with predefined Pie & Donut, Line & Area, Column & Bar and Scatter & Bubble. Generated Flash-files are dynamic and can be presented in 2D or 3D. The loader can load data from XML or CSV, so you can easily export data from Excel, dynamically generate data file with PHP, ASP, .NET or other programming language. Some flash-charts also have animation effects.

amCharts is linkware which means that you have to place a link to the source if you’d like to use it for free. You can also purchase a single site license for 85 Euros (~$117). We’ve already reviewed amCharts previously.

AnyChart Flash Chart Component
AnyChart is a more powerful alternative to Open Flash Chart. It is fully cross-browser and cross-platform and can generate Pie, Bar, Line, Candlestick, Area, Column, Bubble, Spline, Dot/Marker, Scatter, Candlestick and Doughnut charts. It can be used with virtually all scripting languages — ASP.NET, ASP, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails, simple HTML pages and also PowerPoint presentations.

AnyCharts is driven by XML as universal data interface, so you can visualize data from any data format: from files in text, Excel, CSV formats to MySQL, MS SQL, and Oracle database servers. Users can save the generated charts as an image for email sending or chart export. AnyChart is huge, but not that inexpensive - a one developer licence starts at $649.00.

Rich Chart Server for .NET
Rich Chart Server generates captivating interactive Flash charts from ASP.NET and Windows Forms applications. Rich Chart Server uses flexible templates to integrate dynamic content from a variety of data sources. Price $295.

Flash Charts Pro
Flash Carts Pro — ASP Chart and PHP Flash Charting tool — comes with 9 main categories and more than 30 chart types. No installation is required. Upload the Flash file and generate a list of ingoing values - or use a script. Customization is possible via the XML file itself. The tool offers multi-lingual (UTF-8) characters support, customizable animation, grid component and dynamically resizable charts. The price range starts at $59. Unfortunately there is no trial-version.

Swiff Chart Generator
Swiff Chart Generator is the server-side solution to dynamically serve eye-catching animated charts from Active Server Pages (ASP), PHP scripts or JSP scripts. Query data from a database, apply your own style template created with the Swiff Chart authoring tool and Swiff Chart Generator instantly generates high-impact charts in Flash format, PNG/JPG format, SVG format and PDF format. Use Swiff Point Player to incorporate your Flash Charts into your PowerPoint presentations. Pricing starts at $149.

XML/SWF Charts
PHP/SWF Charts offers a simple and dynamic solution for interactive Flash-based charts. Columns, circles, bars and pies can be displayed in 3D. You create an XML source to describe a chart, then pass it to this tool’s flash file to generate the chart. The XML source can be prepared manually, or generated dynamically using any scripting language (PHP, ASP, CFML, Perl, etc.).

The script requires only PHP 4 support; it is free, however all charts are by default linked to the source — unless you’ve purchased a license.

Open Flash Chart (OFC)
OFC is an open-source project. The Flash chart offers 35 chart variations; among them a number of bar charts, pie charts and line charts. Provided tutorials explain how the script can be extended with further functionality such as mouse-over effects and how the database can be queried for some values and the results then displayed in a graph. Open Flash Chart uses Flash and PHP; data can be stored in plain text (.txt). The package, available via Sourceforge, includes a number of examples and samples.

Charts and Graphs: PHP/ASP Libraries

Libchart
Libchart is is a simple PHP-library. You can create Line-, Bar- (horizontal and vertical) and Piecharts. The tool requires PHP compiled with GD Graphics Library and FreeType. Libchart is a free software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Image_Graph
Image_Graph (formerly known as GraPHPite) utilizes PHP’s object oriented model to enable users/developers to create highly versatile graphs in a simple way. There are 14 highly customizable chart types including line, bar, area, pie, impulse, dot/scatter, step, candlestick, box & whisker, radar, etc.

The free script requires PHP4 or PHP5 support with GD 2 support for optimal performance and PEAR package, including Image_Color and Image_Canvas package. The site offers over 80 samples of how the tool can be used.

JpGraph
JpGraph is a Object-Oriented Graph creating library for PHP. The library is completely written in PHP and can be used in any PHP scripts. The library can be used to create numerous types of graphs either on-line or written to a file. Line plots, filled line plots, step line plots, bar and pie charts, ring and scatter plots, polar and canvas plots as well as Gantt Charts. The designs of charts aren’t that impressive, but they don’t have to.

.netCHARTING
.netCHARTING utilizes the .NET framework and GDI+ providing a managed charting solution for C# and VB.NET developers working with ASP.NET or WinForms. The tool offers a huge choice of available charts. In most cases 2D and 3D-views are available. Price range starts at $395 for a single site license.

Charts and Graphs: JavaScript-based solutions

Emprise JavaScript Charts
Emprise JavaScript Charts is done in pure JavaScript — no Flash support is required. The script includes features such as hints, mouse tracking, mouse events, key tracking and events, zooming, scrolling, and crosshairs which might raise interactivity and user experience. EJSChart supports XML-formatted data.

Every aspect of the charting display can be configured and customized through well-documented properties and methods. An interesting solution, offering a number of designs and behaviours. Pricing starts at $100.00. There is a watermarked private version available for free.

PlotKit - Javascript Chart Plotting
PlotKit is an experimental JavaScript-based chart and graph plotting library. It has support for HTML Canvas and SVG via Adobe SVG Viewer as well as native browser support. The script requires MochiKit JavaScript library, version 1.3 or higher. Released under the BSD License.

Plotr
This lightweight charting framework based on PlotKit draws simple charts. It’s free, and there is no use of Flash. There are also no interactive elements, however you don’t always need them.

CSS-based Solutions

An overview of techniques and ideas to create simple charts with CSS and (X)HTML. These solutions provide easy methods to generate static charts and style them; however, they can’t compete with the interactivity Flash offers.

Ajax MGraph
A user interactive XHTML/CSS graph which is powered by PHP - with an easy database integration.
CSS Vertical Bar Graphs
Eric Meyer’s method to design charts with CSS.
CSS Diagrams
A classic. A technique to display CSS-based diagrams with absolute and relative positioning.
CSS for Bar Graphs
Another CSS-technique by ApplesToOranges.

Dynamic Pie Chart with CSS
Real World Bar Graphics with some CSS
SAC Simple Accessible Charts
CSS Line Graphs
Vertical Bar Graphs with CSS and PHP
An accessible bar chart
Stu Nicholls definition list bar chart
Chart Demo (uses Javascript as well)

Online Services and Generators

To create charts you don’t need installation or software. Of course, you can get things done online — with charts and graphs generators. The fact that charts aren’t that simple to deal with is realized once you have to input all the data manually. Be prepared: to get the final results you might need dozens of clicks and web forms to input your data.

Rich Chart Live
Rich Chart live offers a number of templates and styles. The image below shows the “watercolor pie”-style. Output: Flash-, PowerPoint or image you can insert in your weblog instantly.
FusionCharts Google Gadget
The online-version of Fusioncharts.
Create a Graph
Supposed to be used by kids, this tool offers a variety of different charts which can be generated once the data is provided. Flash is required.

Free Software and Commercial Solutions

You can find an overview of popular charts-related applications in our article Diagrams: Tools and Tutorials. Among other things we’ve covered DIA, JFreeChart, Omnigraffle and Microsoft Visio.

Published in Developer's Toolbox, October 18th, 2007
Tags: charts, diagrams, flash, graphics, scripts

1.

Hector (October 18th, 2007, 11:06 pm)

Impressive and useful as always, thanks!
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2.

Xilo32 (October 18th, 2007, 11:11 pm)

Great resource of different useful styles of displaying information! Thanks again for the great read.
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3.

kidsinhalf (October 18th, 2007, 11:25 pm)

Is that a complement of a previous article ?
Last time I discovered Link [www.interactivemaps.org] and it was perfect for my applications.
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4.

Arash (October 19th, 2007, 12:10 am)

Interesting would be to measure the effects of the different styles of charts and graphs.
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5.

Joseph (October 19th, 2007, 12:37 am)

Great list. I’m going to have to try out some of the options I haven’t seen before.
Also, here’s another one that I use quite frequently in print work, that has a php library for online:
Link [sparkline.org]

Joe.
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6.

Ray Cromwell (October 19th, 2007, 1:09 am)

At the end of the month, we will be releasing a free, open source, version of Chronoscope, a pure-clientside Javascript charting component written using Google Web Toolkit that is specifically designed to support very large datasets (tens of thousands to millions of points).

See a demo here: Link [timepedia.org]
- Comment
7.

Dick (October 19th, 2007, 1:33 am)

I usually go simply with Libchart and it always worked well. However, I see that flash charts are getting more and more popular, thus maybe I should indeed consider using something more advanced. Thanks for the links!
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8.

Melissa (October 19th, 2007, 2:35 am)

Great, really useful as always.

I’m a user of FusionCharts Free, just for keeping ontop of sales charts.
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9.

therapix (October 19th, 2007, 3:09 am)

Excellent selection. Awesome job as always, you guys are my new heroes.
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10.

Andrew Benton (October 19th, 2007, 3:09 am)

Very nice article, it’s always hard to find a good chart/graph solution for implementation website, thanks for the references.
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11.

mote (October 19th, 2007, 4:02 am)

great collection
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12.

Evangelist (October 19th, 2007, 4:26 am)

Fantastic stuff - now these WILL come in handy. Once again, you did it :)
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13.

Maxime (October 19th, 2007, 4:58 am)

Thanks for the analyze and the agglomeration work ! I was looking it.
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14.

Christian (October 19th, 2007, 5:37 am)

As more people develop their coding skills and produce online content they will be using these reporting tools more and more often. Smahing list! Thanks!
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15.

Evan (October 19th, 2007, 5:46 am)

I’ve used fusioncharts before and it’s pretty damn sleek… wish they had an option for outputting as a straight image file though
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16.

Rian (October 19th, 2007, 5:50 am)

I am really troubled to see more an more articles like this. Most of these tools create pretty flashy charts, that’s for sure, but they don’t teach anyone how to visualize data properly. Why would you ever need a donut chart or a 3D stacked cilinder chart? What does that add to the data that a simple 2D bar chart can’t show you? There is so much of what Edward Tufte refers to as “non-data ink” on these charts that it just smothers the “data ink” completely.

We need to teach analysts the techniques to use simple and straight-forward charts to let the data shine through. All these different primary colors and 3D stuff have nothing to do with the data. Check out the work of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few for some good visualization principles…
- Comment
17.

Tyroga (October 19th, 2007, 7:11 am)

Thanks for the great article, didn’t know there were so many different types of charting out there! I will have to check some of them out.

Last time I used the FusionCharts Free version you couldn’t create links within the chart, all clicks on the chart went to the FusionCharts website. I bought a license so I could let the client drill down into the data, made it much more interactive.

@Rian - unfortunately charts are often created for management who like them to look “pretty”. I often wonder how many of the reports we are made to generate ever actual have the data on them read. It’s all about the look of it.
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18.

marco (October 19th, 2007, 9:53 am)

it’s just amazing!
great collection!
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19.

Dave (October 19th, 2007, 10:32 am)

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

(awesome)
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20.

Ear (October 19th, 2007, 11:02 am)

No mention of ploticus? Been using it for years at work and it drives hundreds of internal dashboards for us. Great program and very active author.

Link [ploticus.sourceforge.net]

Maybe not as “pretty” as these but way easy to use and tons of options and chart types.
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21.

Drew (October 19th, 2007, 1:23 pm)

One that wasn’t mentioned is an open source Ajax widget being developed at MIT that I use called Timeplot/Timeline

Link [simile.mit.edu] works very well but currently lacks IE support
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22.

Arun (October 19th, 2007, 1:52 pm)

As Always you’ve smashed us with useful information once again
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23.

Jarrod (October 19th, 2007, 2:07 pm)

Link [www.dundas.com] is handy to use for all of you dot net people. It’s a bit exy, but the support is excellent, and the graphing output is 1st rate. Multiple output formats (Flash, PNG, etc) make it suitable for lots of purposes, although I tend to only use the PNG output. You can also link parts of your charts so you can easily provide drilldowns into data.

Cheers! Good article.
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24.

michele (October 19th, 2007, 4:58 pm)

Great resource, YAHOO flash library (ATLAS) also provides a chart engine.

Link [developer.yahoo.com]
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25.

Ben Bodien (October 19th, 2007, 8:01 pm)

Fantastic roundup, as always guys - well done!

Just a note - PHP/SWF and XML/SWF charts are two separate products, differentiated by the data input method.
- Comment
26.

Fred B (October 19th, 2007, 8:06 pm)

Worth pointing out that ColdFusion has charting functions built in.
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27.

Zul Azman (October 19th, 2007, 8:56 pm)

Great collection.. nice!!
- Comment
28.

Scott Patten (October 20th, 2007, 5:21 am)

Link [www.plotomatic.com] is a scientific graphing web application that would fit well under your ‘online services and generators’ section. If does things that scientists need like curve fitting and error bars, but you don’t need to use them and it allows you to link to your graphs from any web-page.
- Comment
29.

Wayne Vaughan (October 20th, 2007, 6:51 am)

ComponentArt has a top-notch charting engine.

Link [www.componentart.com]
- Comment
30.

John Boxall (October 20th, 2007, 10:53 am)

Dear Smashing Magazine, please stop writing articles.

I would like to get some work done.

Thanks,

John
- Comment
31.

ZiNG (October 20th, 2007, 5:25 pm)

i prefer amcharts
- Comment
32.

David Fiske (October 20th, 2007, 11:16 pm)

I use Open Flash Chart over at Link [www.comparesatnav.co.uk] and it works very well. It was easy to set up and looks great.

An example chart can be found Link [www.comparesatnav.co.uk]
- Comment
33.

zooloo (October 21st, 2007, 10:48 pm)

PHP/SWF Charts really looks awesome! Thanks
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34.

Alessio Michelini (October 22nd, 2007, 6:41 pm)

Great article! I’ve just thinked how to represent statics information on my cms, and here i found the solution!
- Comment
35.

Ruan Caiman (October 22nd, 2007, 10:12 pm)

I did a pretty broad search for plotting tools about 6 months ago, and came across pretty much all of the ones mentioned in the article (although not all the ones mentioned in comments - I’ll take a look at those). The only tool I found that could alternate between log and linear plots for both axes (a specific need, but it might be common within scientific fields) was not mentioned in this list - Adobe’s Link [www.adobe.com], a Flex Builder plug-in.
- Comment
36.

solarium (October 25th, 2007, 3:10 am)

great, very good that you collected lots of variations to display - thanks
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37.

::m (October 31st, 2007, 6:22 am)

I’ve been using Illustrator to design charts for nearly 10 years…it’s amazing what you can do with Photoshop too. Good to see it here. My tip? Always save the working files :o)
- Comment
38.

Agust Gudbjornsson (October 31st, 2007, 6:47 am)

Great post, thanks for the gathering!
- Comment
39.

Jon Peltier (November 2nd, 2007, 8:18 pm)

It seems that Rian (comment 16) was the only reader not blinded by the special effects, the shiny reflective surfaces, the shadows and false depth effects, and the overwhelming explosions of color. At best these special effects can only detract from the data, and at worst they can completely overwhelm and befuddle the poor sap who is charged with interpreting the chart.

It seems these fancy programs emphasize the ability to create amazing technicolor displays, and not the keep-it-simple credo of effective visualization.
- Comment
40.

Eric (November 7th, 2007, 12:44 am)

I see some of the most interesting new appraches to dynamic, scalable, charts for the web is the Link [developer.mozilla.org].

John Resig (creator of jQuery) has some cool videos of Link [ejohn.org].

I think we’ll see the JavaScript libraries adding in support for these types of features via plugins in the near feature.

vector scalable, cross-browser, dynamic charts, without flash… Awesome!
- Comment

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