Ask HN: Google Analytics Charts

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465816

by grep • 16 years ago

53 25 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

What software do you use to create beautiful charts?

As for example: Google Analytics charts, how would you do that? What other web apps do you know that have beautiful charts?

dacort• 16 years ago

In no particular order: http://g.raphaeljs.com, http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis, http://highcharts.com, http://www.fusioncharts.com/ (Flash)

[edit] Some commentary: I've used Fusion Charts in the past (on tweetstats.com) and it provides some good looking and easy to implement charts. That said, it's Flash but it was the best looking option around when I implemented it back in late '07. Since then, there's been a nice rise in JS charts. gRaphael is amazing, but somewhat buggy and lacking documentation. Highcharts seems very complete and well-documented. I only came across Protovis recently, but it seems pretty darn awesome.

noelsequeira• 16 years ago

A few more:

http://www.amcharts.com/ has an extremely comprehensive stock chart in addition to decent flash charts

http://www.rgraph.net/ is an html5 charting library you might want to look at.

I've worked with Fusion Charts for a while now, and their charts 1) have a very comprehensive API 2) are plain beautiful, especially the 3D charts.

JS charts look very promising, and I'm really excited about Highcharts and gRaphael.

If you're looking for something similar to the map component that Google Analytics uses, take a look at http://www.ammap.com/ or http://www.fusioncharts.com/maps/

@dacort - Thanks for pointing me to protovis. Expected it to be more of a hobby project (from the url), but was blown away by how comprehensive it is!

cjy• 16 years ago

Plug: For dynamic US state intensity maps I created the tool http://www.flashusamap.com/statistics.php

daniel_levine2• 16 years ago

we use protovis for our graphs and it is pretty damn awesome. The cross-browser support (no IE) is an issue until IE 9, but it's pretty incredible stuff. I'm no designer but they make it easy to make pretty complex charts.

endtime4• 16 years ago

The lack of IE support is what kills it for us. We need to do some charting stuff, and we'll probably end up extending gRaphael or Grafico or something and copying several of the Protovis charts.

That said, how have you found the performance to be? Some of their demos are kind of slow, e.g. http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/ex/candlestick.html.

DMiner• 16 years ago

They use Flash.

http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gall...

Open flash chart ,an open source project: http://teethgrinder.co.uk/open-flash-chart/

jcruz• 16 years ago

Google Chart Tools lets you generate images for static charts, or create interactive charts using their javascript library: http://code.google.com/apis/charttools/index.html

Also, check out RGraph for HTML5 canvas graphs http://www.rgraph.net

lvvlvv• 16 years ago

You can make static-PNG charts with http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net or http://volnitsky.com/project/mplw

jnoller• 16 years ago

Flot (http://code.google.com/p/flot/) has treated me fairly well, but a coworker swears by highcharts.

kilian2• 16 years ago

I made Grafico: http://grafico.kilianvalkhof.com it's an opinionated SVG charting library with excellent documentation and lots of customizable options.

endtime4• 16 years ago

Very nice...btw, the example entitled "Line graph with multiple lines and a watermark" is just showing the grid and labels in Opera 10.54 on Windows.

kilian2• 16 years ago

Thanks, I'll look into it! Opera is a fickle beast ;)

dimarco• 16 years ago

I use HighCharts(http://www.highcharts.com/) at press9. Javascript, very nice charts.

revorad3• 16 years ago

Plug: Give my startup Pretty Graph a try (http://prettygraph.com). We are trying to build the best web-based graphing tool. Still in very early stages, and looking for early users. I was going to make a review post here soon, but since you asked now I thought I should mention it anyway.

endtime4• 16 years ago

Are your charts all images, or can you generate SVG/VML charts?

revorad3• 16 years ago

By default, our charts are images for cross-browser compatibility and speed, but we can produce SVG too (not VML at the moment).

imusicmash• 16 years ago

if you're on a .Net platform, you may want to take a look at Dundas Data Visualization http://www.dundas.com. Just try to avoid the defaults :) We use these for data vis at http://allegiance.com.

Also, Theresa Neil posted a good list of 28 data vis tools here http://www.insideria.com/2009/12/28-rich-data-visualization-...

FlemishBeeCycle• 16 years ago

http://www.jqplot.com/ is one that I've been using lately.

ElbertF• 16 years ago

I used http://pchart.sourceforge.net on http://wappalyzer.com. It doesn't look like the developer actively working on it anymore though.

grep• 16 years ago

Thank you all.

agbegin• 16 years ago

I'm on the ZingChart team - we render charts in both HTML5 and Flash. So far we've gotten great feedback. Our charts are JSON driven and can plot huge data quickly [demo] http://www.zingchart.com/labs/blog_charts/10k_points.html.

http://www.zingchart.com http://www.twitter.com/zingchart

treskot• 16 years ago

http://visifire.com, I've been using this cool set of open-source charts. Look no further if you are searching for beautiful charts.

Ask HN: Google Analytics Charts

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