HighCharts, Bluff, gRaphael – Javascript charting libraries
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.
Proprietary garbage.
http://bluff.jcoglan.com/ is free
http://raphaeljs.com/ free
No sense pimping proprietary non-free software when they are reasonable free alternatives. Especially on webpages.
Anonymous
2 Dec 09 at 9:57 pm
Fair enough. I’ll add Bluff to the post.
Raphael is very impressive, but I haven’t seen it used specifically for charting… [goes to Google]… Aha! There is a charting library! I’ll add that, too.
That said, HighCharts is pretty nice and I’ve spent way, way, way, way, way more than $80 of my own time getting open source Flash charting libraries to work. I’m also happy to give my $80 to a developer of quality software.
alson
2 Dec 09 at 10:47 pm
http://code.google.com/p/flot/
Flot is very good and powerful as well.
sclv
3 Dec 09 at 11:45 am
Thanks. I’ll add that, too.
alson
3 Dec 09 at 1:20 pm
Flot is just time-series line charts, which is great if that’s all you need.
As nice as all the others are, none of them have the polish of highcharts that I’ve seen. They just have some real sexy charts. If you plan on doing a ton of charting, the $80 to make your charts look real nice is well spent.
Their pie does leave a little to be desired. Sprinkle g.raphael pie in amongst your highcharts everythingelse and you’re set.
David
28 Jan 10 at 11:57 am
You may also take a look at simple JavaScript charts – dhtmlxChart. It’s a framework-agnostic library based on Canvas. GPL-licensed (for proprietary projects a commercial license is required, $99 for all of your sites). Demos: http://www.dhtmlx.com/docs/products/dhtmlxChart/index.shtml
Paul
14 Aug 12 at 11:52 am