nico nuzzaci

This past weekend, besides going for a stroll and trying Gustav’s long distance ice skates, I looked into how to go about drawing dynamic websites graphs.

I found 4 candidates. None of them being absolutely perfect for my liking. I was thinking something along the line of W3C’s Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). What I found was mainly Adobe Flash tools or different solutions requiring javascript libraries.

From W3C’s standard approach to a Flash-based solution was a bit of a big leap. I can deal with javascript libraries, but my preferred library is Mootools and I couldn’t find one that uses Mootools. So, feel free to post comments if you know of anything better, mightier and nicer than the four listed below.

1. Plotkit. Plotkit looks extremely nice. My only reservation is that it used the Mochikit javascript library. I haven’t investigated much or played with Mochikit.

2. Flotr. Flotr is an adaptation on Plotkit — or inspired by — but unlike Plotkit it uses Prototype Javascript Framework.

3. Flot. Flot uses Jquery as it’s javascript library. I have worked with Jquery before so I ended up giving it a go. But i’m not completely convinced and will probably give both Plotkit and Flotr a go too.

4. Google Chart. Unlike the above option (or any other I found), Google requires no additional library or plug-in to be installed. The Google Chart API simply returns a PNG-format image in response to a URL. So you basically just build up some parameters in a IMG tag and in return Google gives you an image. It’s extremely easy but comes with restrictions. Example of a Google Chart:

Overall i’m impressed with all of them. It’s quite fascinating how easy they make if for you. But, as mentioned, I don’t think I’ve found the holy grail for dynamic graphs.