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We're currently working with a dozen different clients, all web application (re)designs. All of these clients have data rich applications and need equally rich data visualizations to help their end customers analyze data quickly and effectively.
What makes my job really interesting is that these clients are in different industries and are using different technologies. So we have pulled together a set of 28 tools for creating graphs, Gantt charts, diagrammers, calendars/schedulers, gauges, mapping, pivot tables, OLAP cubes, and sparklines, in Flash, Flex, Ajax or Silverlight.
Ajax.org
Ajax.org Platform is a pure javascript application framework for creating real-time collaborative applications that run in the browser.
AnyChart
AnyChart is a flexible Flash based solution that allows you to create interactive and great looking flash charts.
Axiis
Axiis is a Data Visualization Framework for Flex. It has been designed to be a concise, expressive, and modular framework that let developers and designers create compelling data visualization solutions.
Also, take a look at the nice window-in-window design on the saturnboy blog.
BirdEye
BirdEye is a community project to advance the design and development of a comprehensive open source information visualization and visual analytics library for Adobe Flex. The actionscript-based library enables users to create multi-dimensional data visualization interfaces for the analysis and presentation of information.
Degrafa
Degrafa is a declarative graphics framework for creating rich user interfaces, data visualization, mapping, graphics editing and more.
DojoX Data Chart
An addition in the Dojo 1.3 release is the new dojox.charting class. Its primary purpose is to make connecting a chart to a Data Store a simple process.
Chronoscope
If you need to visualize thousands or millions of points of data, check this out. Very well designed and can be navigated with the keyboard or mouse. There's a Javascript API, a Google Visualization API or try it as a Google Gadget on Google Spreadsheets, iGoogle, or Open Social.
Dundas
Dundas has a wide range of data visualization solutions for Microsoft technologies. They offer a number of data visualization tools including: Chart, Gauge, Map and Calendar for .net and Dashboards for Silverlight.
ExtJs
Ext JS is a cross-browser JavaScript library for building rich internet applications. It now includes charts.
Flex
Flex has built in chart controls: area, bar, bubble, candlestick, column, HLOCC, Line, Pie, Plot. Quick tutorial here that can get you up and running with nicely styled charts using effects.
Flex uses FXG, a graphical interchange format developed by Adobe and is similar in many ways to SVG. Nice article here by James Whittaker looking at FXG and Degrafa. And you should definitely have this book on your desk if you are using Flex: Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0.
FlexMonster Pivot Table and Charts
Flexmonster provides Pivot table Flex/Flash components rich internet application (RIA) development services.
FusionCharts
Animated flash charts for web apps. Looks like they work with most technologies.
Google Chart API
The Google Chart API lets you dynamically generate charts.
gRaphaël
gRaphaël is a Javascript library to help you create stunning charts on your website.
iLog Exlixir
Enhance data visualization within Flex and AIR applications with IBM ILOG Elixir.
JFreeChart
Creates charts such as bar charts, line charts, pie charts, time series charts, candlestick charts, high/low/open/close charts, wind plots, and meter charts. I wish these charts looked better out of the box, because the features and functionality are good, but the visual design really detracts from the graphs. JFreeChart guys- email me- together we can make the world of JFreeChart a prettier place.
JQuery Plugins
There ar a lot of JQuery chart pugins:
- Visualize by the Filament Group
- JQChart
- Flot
- Sparklines
- TufteGraph
JPowered
The PHP graphing scripts provide a very easy way to embed dynamically generated graphs and charts into PHP applications and HTML web pages.
I can only hope that CSS can make these look better. I'll do a follow up post on how to make your charts aesthetically pleasing.
JSCharts
JS Charts is a JavaScript chart generator that requires little or no coding. JS Charts allows you to easily create charts in different templates like bar charts, pie charts or simple line graphs.
Kap IT Labs Diagrammer and Visualizer
Kap Lab's Diagrammer provides ready-to-use yet highly customizable multi-layout data visualization and diagramming for Adobe Flex and Air.
Visualizer displays data as graphs to better visualize connections. Kap Lab's Visualizer provides ready-to-use yet highly customizable multi-layout data visualization for Adobe Flex and Air.
MilkChart
A simple to use, yet robust library for transforming table data into a chart. This library uses the HTML5 tag and is only supported on browsers other than IE until ExCanvas gets proper text support.
Open Flash Charts
Open source Flash charts.
PlotKit
PlotKit is a Chart and Graph Plotting Library for Javascript. It has support for HTML Canvas and also SVG via Adobe SVG Viewer and native browser support.
Protovis
Protovis composes custom views of data with simple marks such as bars and dots. Unlike low-level graphics libraries that quickly become tedious for visualization, Protovis defines marks through dynamic properties that encode data, allowing inheritance, scales and layouts to simplify construction.
Silverlight
Microsoft Silverlight comes with the bar, line, pie, column, and scatter charts.
Telerik Charts for Silverlight, WFP, ASP.NET
Telerik Charts offers rich functionality and data presentation capabilities.
VisiFire
Visifire is a set of open source data visualization controls - powered by Microsoft® Silverlight™ & WPF.
yFiles for Ajax , .NET or Flex
The yFiles product family means state-of-the-art software components for the visualization of networks and diagrams. Unequaled automatic diagram layout, cutting edge graph analysis, and extraordinary visualization.
Additional Resources
- The Three Laws of Great Graphs
- Many Eyes
- Info Design Patterns- Awesome, awesome site by Christian Behrens. Hint- click all the check boxes on the left to get started.
- Tom Gonzale's blog form-function
- Degrafa Blog
- Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data by Stephen Few
- JunkCharts
- Chart Junk- a UI Anti-Pattern
- Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0. by Juan Sanchez and Andy McIntosh
- Designing Web Interfaces:Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions by Bill Scott and Theresa Neil
Thanks
Thanks to Greg Leppert for helping me with this list.
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Awesome collection of data biz libraries. Too bad some of the licensing fees are insane.
Side note: you misspelled iLog Elixir as iLog Exlixir.
Thanks for the great ressource.
I found recently http://businessintelligence.me - a cool data visualization application (based on Flex I believe).
Great Collection!! I think i'm going to have to check some of these out. I've only heard of about 1/3rd of the whole list
You forgot Flare (http://flare.prefuse.org/)
Wow, thank you!!
I recently found this very good looking one:
highcharts.com/ it is jquery based.
I would definitely suggest Google Chart API and the JQuery plugin from the Filament Group.
A great alternative to Dundas (expensive) would be Microsoft Chart Controls (free)...(the Microsoft Chart Controls are built on the same framework as the Dudas charts) -
Microsoft Chart Controls download link http://tinyurl.com/6hoaxu
great collection.
Seems to be a distinct shortage of good calendar components though.
iLog's suite is truly awesome but costs too much for most of my projects unfortunately.
We have a post on Ajax calendars and schedulers too.
Check out Chart FX from Software FX also. Lots of great products for every platform.
Very useful links. I've been looking for such libraries from few days.
Excellent... I found a control that I have been looking for. Thanks for your work on this matter.
Posted an article on my blog with the same theme.
Check out this for more tools/libraries available http://blog.2much2learn.com/?p=301
Madan Narra
2much2learn.com
Also check out MIT's SIMILE project:
http://simile.mit.edu
Thanks for the shout out.
Axiis is simply awesome for inventing new visualizations and squeezing information out of your data. But if you just want something simple, like a bar chart, I'd recommend choosing an equally simple charting tool like the Google Chart API.
Awesome list. thanks.
Don't forget the...
Google Vizualisation API
http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/
It's not quite the same as google charts. It's got guages, maps, intensity maps, magic-table etc.
Gallery is here:
http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery.html
Great list, thank you!
For more information on data visualization tool, you can also visit :www.instantatlas.com
Dygraph is also worth mentioning - http://www.danvk.org/dygraphs/
Dygraphs is also worth mentioning - http://www.danvk.org/dygraphs/
OrgChart software is the Powerful Organizational Chart Software helps you to build Succession Planning Chart, Organizational Structure, Enable Resource Planning and Employee Communications.
Did you guys see http://www.mindset-geometrics.com.ar ?
It's also inside the Tour De Flex. It allows you to build custom charts using predefined SVG files or Adobe Catalyst models.
Thanks for this great post!
Hernan
I'll also toss another one into this (fantastic) list. YUI Charts from Yahoo http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/charts
Theresa, thanks! Wanted to let you know about a great Silverlight DV package from Infragistics I've been working with and it even has a Silverlight Pivot Grid (which I haven't seen anywhere else): http://www.infragistics.com/dotnet/netadvantage/silverlight/data-visualization.aspx#Overview
Another great options is:
http://www.amcharts.com/
Just started using it for our K2 engine.
Thanks for the nice list. Also, Smart client for GWT (GWT did not make your list) makes alot of great widgets for RIA http://www.smartclient.com/
Very Helpful. Thanks.
Good list, but you're missing Style Chart, which is more flexible than all of these. http://chart.inetsoft.com
Also, for interactive dashboards, Visualize Free uses the same graph engine. http://visualizefree.com
Nice! Thanks for sharing
Nice! Thanks for sharing
What about prefuse?
http://flare.prefuse.org/
I would also look into processing -- http://processing.org/learning/libraries/ .
It is a graphics display tool. While it doesn't come stock with "charts" sometimes it's easier to just work with base graphics primitives than to work within an existing framework.
Where is Tableau Software? Your list can't be complete without them. Plus they're coming out with a free product in beta now called Tableau Public.
love all these stuff and many valueable plus in comment above
Awesome!thanks for sharing that with us.Very helpful.
Thanks, going to develope this for me site - http://www.articlewindow.com
Yeah, Tableau is great for create rich, interactive visualizations. It should be on that list too.
Amanda,
http://www.driverdetectivedownload.net
Posted an article on my blog with the same theme.
http://www.csscodes.net and http://www.ajax-tutorial.org and http:/www.indir7.net and http:/www.ilaclar.gen.tr
I found a great post that I overlooked,
">http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2009/12/70-tools-for-visualizing-your-data-css-flash-jquery-php.html"> 75+ Tools for Visualizing your Data
You can have a look at FusionCharts for Dreamweaver as well - the easiest way to generate Animated Web charts from Dreamweaver
I really like the ability of iLog Exlixir. The capability to enhance data visualization within Flex and AIR applications with IBM ILOG Elixir is awesome.
Thanks. I am thinking about using these tools on my site.
Thanks a lot for the great and informative entry.
Hello, just to let you know I have now posted my Reference List on Data Visualisation Sources on the net, with your blog near the top. Keep up the good work!
Thank you !
Thanks for the post.Axiis is simply awesome for inventing new visualizations and squeezing information out of your data. But if you just want something simple, like a bar chart, I'd recommend choosing an equally simple charting tool like the Google Chart API.
All QA
Great list and cool visualization plots. Spotfire is a great visualization platform that makes data viz interactive, so you can filter and analyze datasets with the plots updating dynamically.
http://spotfire.tibco.com/
This is a great list.
Thanks for the post. Axiis is simply awesome for inventing new visualizations and squeezing information out of your data. But if you just want something simple, like a bar chart, I'd recommend choosing an equally simple charting tool like the Google Chart API.
Thank you very much
A fantastic statistic source. I will use some of them at my "iddaa tahminleri" sport stats site.
Thank you. One more "EASY-TO-USE" and yet powerful app. you may find here: (http://www.flycharts.net/)
Thank you so much! I've needed something like this for my local office reports because people don't really like long list of numbers. Going to publish this on http://www.hwca.com/accountants-reading/ if ok?
I'd love to re-tweet this. Would you mind?
- England!
Thanks for all these tools. I specially liked the jQuery plugins.
This is a great list of tools.
There is one very important tool missing
Xcelsius
You can read more here:
SAP Site
Dashboards:
http://analysis-reporting.blogspot.com/2009/08/xcelsius-dashboards-map-component.html
Where is Tableau Software? Your list can't be complete without them. Plus they're coming out with a free product in beta now called Tableau Public.
Manu | Jeux de voiture
I've been tinkering with VisiFire, I must say it is quite complete
Very nice collection of data visualization tools and resources. It’s good to see ever more practical tools emerging to empower great visual data design. We should see impacts in a number of contexts.
Great resource thanks
From navigating the Web in entirely new ways to seeing where in the world twitters are coming from, data visualization tools are changing the way we view content. However, I'm looking for a "generic" data visualization application? I need an app that I can feed in data and their associations and then see the visualization of that data. It's for a website of my friend, and I'd love to find something that could help me visualize this unique data set I have. Suggestions?
Great job ! It's really complete. I used a few time RichGraphs.com . You import Excel Files and then you get a flash graph. Really useful !!
This is a great resource and lots of helpful additions in the comments for data visualization tools - some of these are quite impressive when doing a presentation hooked up to a large screen 3D led tv monitor and the vibrant display comes alive - whether it makes a positive reinforcement on getting the point across remains to be seen but it has great potential to catch attention and serves as eye candy.