Alson Kemp

Bumped into HighCharts today.  See here: http://highcharts.com Very nice library for embedding charts into your HTML.  Nice to see that browsers are finally getting to the point that HighCharts can be written.   Also, it’s nice to think about being able to dump Flash charting solutions in favor of a simple Javascript library.  Worth the $80 for commercial use (I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent well more than $80 of my time wrestling with an open source Flash charting library).

[Updating post to add more libs.]

Okay.  I got called out for not poking around a bit more.  There are nice open-source, liberally licensed JS chart libs.

Open Source

Bluff : Ruby’s Gruff ported to JS.  Looks pretty straightforward.

gRaphael : built on the awesome Raphael JS vector graphics library.  Limited functionality, but that’ll change.

Canvas3D : super cool, but not sure if it’s ready for a production site…

jqPlot : charting for jQuery.  I’m neither pro- nor con-jQuery, so I’m not sure that I’d pick a jQuery-centric library.

PlotKit : dependent on MochiKit.

Flot : charting for jQuery.  Again, since I use different JS libraries in different circumstances/apps, I’m not excited about having to pull in jQuery, but Flot looks nice.

Commercial License

JSCharts : HighCharts looks prettier…  $129 for a license for all of your sites (vs. $360 for HighCharts)

Emprise Charts : Very nice.  Pricing is inline with JSCharts and HighCharts.

I’m comfortable with Firefox.  Stable, loads of developer tools, etc., but Google’s Chrome looks awful nice and is screen space efficient.  Fortunately, some lovely fellow has made a Firefox add-on to make Firefox look like Chrome:

Chrome Package

This add-on hides the Firefox toolbar (as opposed to Chromifox, which only provides colors and images).