Adding charts to websites

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
This forum is not for asking programming related questions.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Bill H
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1136
Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2002 10:16 am
Location: San Diego CA
Contact:

Adding charts to websites

Post by Bill H »

I just came across this little utility for adding charts to websites. Inexpensive, really easy to use, and it creates very nice charts in a pretty awesome variety. If you need to use charts...

http://www.maani.us/xml_charts/index.ph ... troduction
alex.barylski
DevNet Evangelist
Posts: 6267
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:00 pm
Location: Winnipeg

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by alex.barylski »

While they are alright I contacted the author several times in the past about commercial licenses and never heard anything back.

Google has a charting tool but by far the best I've found thus far:

http://www.amcharts.com/
User avatar
onion2k
Jedi Mod
Posts: 5263
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:03 pm
Location: usrlab.com

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by onion2k »

Google Charts are best because they're images so they work everywhere, and they're free.
User avatar
Bill H
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1136
Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2002 10:16 am
Location: San Diego CA
Contact:

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by Bill H »

Where were you guys when I was posting on two different forums asking if anyone knew where I could find a charting utility? After several months of searching, I find one I like and you tell me after an hour that I'm using junk and could have done a lot better. Thanks.
matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by matthijs »

There are a couple of good solutions for charts, I've been researching them as well. Pure CSS (quite nice, that's what I'm going to use), Flash and Javascript. I'll look them up tomorrow and post them
User avatar
onion2k
Jedi Mod
Posts: 5263
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:03 pm
Location: usrlab.com

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by onion2k »

We mustn't forget JPGraph either, what with this being a PHP forum.
matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by matthijs »

Today I came across this new project
http://pchart.sourceforge.net/index.php

Others
http://code.google.com/p/flot/
I had a few others, but can't find them right now

There was an article on Alistapart about CSS graphs recently. I think the advantage of using css is that it's fast and customizable. The drawback might be that you don't have much interactive possibilities as you could have with flash or js
User avatar
onion2k
Jedi Mod
Posts: 5263
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:03 pm
Location: usrlab.com

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by onion2k »

I was looking at Flot last night. Aside from a couple of cases where lines weren't drawn I was really impressed. I'm going to have a look at pchart today.
User avatar
JayBird
Admin
Posts: 4524
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2003 7:02 am
Location: York, UK
Contact:

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by JayBird »

matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by matthijs »

So what do you guys think. If you compare the different solutions, Flash, javascript, PHP or CSS. And if you'd use it on an app with many graphs per page. Wouldn't either plain html/css graphs or cached images generated by php be the most lightweight options?

I have little experience with Flash, but the only thing I know is that Firefox (even 3) still almost chokes on flash stuff. And in general (with other browsers as well) loading flash is slow, even with a fast broadband connection.
User avatar
m3mn0n
PHP Evangelist
Posts: 3548
Joined: Tue Aug 13, 2002 3:35 pm
Location: Calgary, Canada

Re: Adding charts to websites

Post by m3mn0n »

I've been a fan of maani's chart system for a few years now. It's amazing.
Post Reply