A chart or a graph is a visual representation of data, in which “the data are represented by symbols, such as bars, lines, or slices”. These symbols can represent tabular numeric data, functions or some kinds of qualitative structures. For one reason or another, a lot of freelancers use Charts and Graphs to display the meaningful data visualizations. As a full-time freelancer and part-time geek, I really like to display my data analytics on pie charts and graphs too.
Nowadays, there are over hundred thousands of resources available on the web. Instead of spending time on researching for the ones you needed, we pick the top and intelligent ones for you. Below, you’ll find a collection of Essential Free Resources for Charts and Graphs Solution by which you can increase your productivity.
A chart can take a large variety of forms, however there are common features that provide the chart with its ability to extract meaning from data.
Typically a chart is graphical, containing very little text, since humans are generally able to infer meaning from pictures quicker than from text. One of the more important uses of text in a graph is in the title. A graph’s title usually appears above the main graphic and provides a succinct description of what the data in the graph refers to.
The data of a chart can appear in all manner of formats, with or without individual labels. It may appear as dots or shapes, connected or unconnected, and in any combination of colors and patterns. Inferences or points of interest can be overlayed directly on the graph to further aid information extraction.
When the data appearing in a chart contains multiple variables, the chart may include a legend. A legend contains a list of the variables appearing in the chart and an example of their appearance. This information allows the data from each variable to be identified in the chart.
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Realizing the increasing demand of useful apps across the web, we regularly feature commercial and free application on instantShift, so decided it was time to bring a roundup of highly essential solutions for charts and graphs to your attention. So, Let’s start with this compilation that every web developer, designer and freelancer should consider. Just keep in mind that this list isn’t a ranking list of charts and graphs solutions.
TufteGraph is a JS library by which you can easily create graphs. All the configuration is by dynamic functions, allowing for a really compact API (very few options). Also, Non-core layout is done via CSS rather than code. You can customize the style of graph by editing it’s CSS.
JS Charts is available free only for non-commercial purpose. For commercial use, get the full license for only $149. This license does NOT allow you to distribute, resell or embed/enclose JS Charts into another distribution pack/application which outputs similar content that can be used by third parties.
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.
MilkChart is a simple to use, yet robust library for transforming table data into a chart. This library uses the HTML5 <canvas> tag and is only supported on browsers other than IE until ExCanvas gets proper text support.
gRaphaël’s goal is to help you create stunning charts on your website. It is based on Raphaël graphics library. Check out the demos to see static and interactive charts in action. gRaphaël currently supports Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+.
moochart is a plugin for MooTools 1.2 that draws bubble diagrams on the canvas tag. Future versions might include pie, bar & line graphs. You can find all the other info like download details and demo on it’s single page.
Canvas 3D Graph is a special type of bar graph that plot numbers in 3D. This first started as PHP-GD project, but soon I realized that there is not much sense in generating complex graph like this on server side (script worked really fast, though). All the other details can be found on information page itself.
The script will best work with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x, Netscape 6.x, Opera 7.x or Konqueror 3.x under Windows and Linux, but it will also work with Netscape 4.x and Opera 5.x under Windows and Linux with some restrictions.
Processing.js is explicitly developed for browsers that support the HTML5 <canvas> element. Processing.js runs in FireFox, Safari, Opera and Chrome but will not be supported in Internet Explorer.
This small utility will simply take a semi-colon delimited data string (the delimiter can be changed) and generate a chart for you. You can add several charts to the same page and there is no limit to how many data items you can have in one chart, just as long as you have enough space in your page.
To draw a graph, you create a new Bluff graph object using the id of a canvas element on the page, set some options, add the data and labels, then tell the graph to draw.
TableDiagram script generates a diagram (chart) view of the data in a table. The values in the table must be non-negative (more than or equal to 0). They can be either integer or decimal.
Anyone easily can use this script to create horizontal / vertical bar graphs, progress bars and faders. You can create simple graphs and even grouped bar graphs with legends, add labels, change colors etc. No graphics or graphical libraries required.
This script was tested with all the major systems and browsers
This is a purely DHTML/ CSS based Pie Graph script. It loads fast and blends in with the rest of the page. It’s very easy to customize and very easy to use. You can even use a transparent background for it!
To design the stats feature of Backbone, our Ruby on Rails CMS, we needed to show a stacked bar graph of page views vs unique visitors. There are plenty of CSS bar graph interpretations, but none of them did stacked bar graphs. So here you can learn how to creat CSS Stacked Bar Graphs Based off Alen Grakalic’s Pure CSS Data Chart.
Having a working knowledge of XHTML and CSS when developing applications is a big help in knowing what can be done client-side and what should be generated server-side. The concept of creating CSS Bar Graphs is simple, utilize the percentage width abilities of CSS to accurately portray a percentage bar graph.
List Bar Chart are nothing more than a styled definition list with just classes defining each line. It’s very simple CSS mathod by which anyone can simply able to creat list bar charts. You may use this method on your personal ‘non-profit’ web site without seeking author’s permission.
SAC (Simple Accessible Charts) are created from a list using CSS. It’s benefit includes: Fully searchable by search engines, Accessible, Scalable, Easy to expand, a more complete listing, and use of Only HTML and CSS.
This is very easy way of creating a semi-dynamic pie chart without the use of server-side imaging libraries.
In web applications developed now days a lot of the logic that previously resided on the server side is now being implemented on the client side. This is especially true for information presentation, components such as trees and columnlist makes it possible for users to interact with the application, or web site if you wish, without contacting the server. However the ability to present data in a graphic rather than textual format has been quite limited, unless a plugin is used or an image is requested from the server. That’s where this component comes in to place, it allows various forms of charts to be created, without any additional plugin, and without using images.
Who wants to use Excel to make a new graph each week? Using CSS and PHP you can create attractive bar graphs (yes, even the stacked kind) that are always up to date.
This is one more simple solution using CSS. It’s main feature includs:
pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create aliased charts. Most of todays chart libraries have a cost, our project is intended to be free. Data can be retrieved from SQL queries, CSV files, or manually provided. This project is still under development and new features or fix are made every week.
Focus has been put on rendering quality introducing an aliasing algorithm to draw eye candy graphics. Rendering speed has been dramatically enhanced since the first version, we’ll still continue optimising the code!
Visifire is a set of open source data visualization controls – powered by Microsoft® Silverlight™ & WPF. Visifire is a multi-targeting control which can be used in both WPF & Silverlight applications. Using the same API, charts in both Silverlight & WPF environments can be created within minutes. Visifire Silverlight Controls can also be embedded in any webpage as a standalone Silverlight App. Visifire is independent of server side technology. It can be used with ASP, ASP.Net, SharePoint, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Python, Ruby or just simple HTML.
Libchart is a free chart creation PHP library, that is easy to use. Main festure includes:
JpGraph is a Object-Oriented Graph creating library for PHP >= 5.1 The library is completely written in PHP and ready to be used in any PHP scripts (both CGI/APXS/CLI versions of PHP are supported).
The library can be used to create numerous types of graphs either on-line or written to a file. JpGraph makes it easy to draw both “quick and dirty” graphs with a minimum of code as well as complex graphs which requires a very fine grained control. The library assigns context sensitive default values for most of the parameters which minimizes the learning curve. The features are there when you need them – not as an obstacle to overcome!
.netCHARTING combines visually stunning graphics and a comprehensive interface to bring you one of the most compelling charting solutions available for any platform.
.netCHARTING utilizes the .NET framework and GDI+ providing a managed charting solution for C# and VB.NET developers working with ASP.NET or WinForms. Using the latest Microsoft technologies has enabled us to step beyond existing visual charting standards and produce visuals much stronger than typical dynamic charting solutions. In fact, we hope you will agree that the .netCHARTING visuals are even superior to high end desktop charting applications!
Image_Graph is, as is indicated by the title, a project to create graphs. It utilizes PHP’s object oriented model, to simple but very customizable enable a user/developer to create highly versatile graphs.
Image_Graph has many features, here are mentioned but a few of them:
FusionCharts Free is a completely free and open-source Flash charting component. It empowers you to create animated and interactive Flash charts for your web applications, desktop applications and presentations. No matter which script or database you are using, even if it is simple HTML, you can take care of all your basic charting needs with FusionCharts Free.
XML/SWF Charts is a simple, yet powerful tool to create attractive charts and graphs from XML data.
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.)
XML/SWF Charts makes the best of both the XML and SWF worlds. XML provides flexible data generation, and Flash provides the best graphic quality.
mCharts is a set of Flash charts for your websites and Web-based products. AmCharts can extract data from simple CSV or XML files, or they can read dynamic data generated with PHP, .NET, Java, Ruby on Rails, Perl, ColdFusion, and many other programming languages.
Open Flash Chart is a collection of Flash applets that you embed in your web page, and which fetch data from the web server to display. At the time of writing, Version 1 lets you create various types of bar chart, line chart and pie chart. Version 2, introduces more sophisticated graph types such as stacked bars. In both cases you get nice little refinements as well as animated pie charts, and with a little fiddling you can customise the way your graph appears by changing its colours, fonts and size. And Open Flash Chart is British, so you’re not only encouraging open source but British open source.
AnyChart is a flexible Flash based charting solution.
AnyChart enables any organization to add cross-browser and cross-platform interactive Flash charts, dashboards, graphs and maps to their applications.
Using AnyChart, our customers are able to maximize the value of their applications by easily adding data visualization tools that:
Rich Chart Server generates captivating dynamic Flash charts from ASP.NET and Windows Forms applications. Use the included authoring tool to visually design a rich chart template which can include stunning animation effects, audio narration, text and image elements, links and tooltips, and any other type of visual customization. Apply the chart template to any available .NET data source or XML document to generate an interactive Flash chart with drill-downs, enabling sophisticated data navigation between multiple charts.
Swiff Chart Generator is the server-side solution to dynamically serve eye-catching animated charts from ASP.NET forms, PHP scripts or JSP scripts. Query data from a database, apply your own style template created with the Swiff Chart authoring tool and instantly generates high-impact charts in Adobe Flash format, PNG/JPG format, SVG format and PDF format.
JFreeChart is a free Java chart library. It supports pie charts (2D and 3D), bar charts (horizontal and vertical, regular and stacked), line charts, scatter plots, time series charts, high-low-open-close charts, candlestick plots, Gantt charts, combined plots, thermometers, dials and more. JFreeChart can be used in applications, applets, servlets and JSP.
ProtoChart is a new opensource library using Prototype and Canvas to create good looking charts. This library is highly motivated by Flot, Flotr and PlotKit libraries. It’s Feature includes:
While compiling this list, it’s always a possibility that we missed some other great chart or graph solutions. Feel free to share it with us.