

An idea for 2012 - client-side data and time flow visualization - zeratul

I was looking for good javascript frameworks that do data visualization. I found couple really good ones: Raphael + g.Raphael, D3, and processing-js. But what really strikes me that we don't have a good idea how to <i>visualize flow of Time and Data</i>. An example of such flow diagram was published by google:<p>http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/10/introducing-flow-visualization.html<p>But I haven't seen any other project that would propose a flow visualization that would be as clear and uncluttered as google analytics is.<p>EDIT: the graph is called "alluvial diagrams" - but I'm still hungry for more (thanks to swanson)
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jnbiche
d3 is an absolutely amazing datavis framework. With it, Mike Bostock has
created the future of information visualizations. And since svg is finally
getting the acceptance that it should have gotten 10 years ago, d3 runs almost
anywhere -- ios, webkit, gecko, android, even the latest IE. It's relatively
low-level, however; users need to be pretty adept at the DOM, javascript, and
svg. As a result,I suspect that someone will create a higher-level interface
for it, maybe even a web-based one. I've thought of doing that myself, but it
would be a big time investment. Anyone else pondering such an open source
project? Something akin to an MIT- or Apache-licensed framework like High
Charts, but based on d3, and with an optional web-based interface.

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zeratul
I'm hoping that Raphael will get higher level API. I think g.Raphael went in
that direction but more needs to be done.

jnbiche: maybe I can interest you in <https://gist.github.com/1515418> please
let me know if there is anything I should add. thanks

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jnbiche
sorry -- I missed your comment until today. You've compiled a great list
there! If I had that list when I first started using js(actually coffeescript)
for data visualization, it would have saved me a lot of time and effort. I
really can't think of anything to add. As I was reading it, I was thinking you
should mention cube, but then you did. That will be a great resource to people
as more and more web datavis moves away from ActionScript and to Javascript.

Regarding Raphael, I think g.Raphael is a pretty high level interface for
creating charts. It's find of on the level of protovis, which was what Mike
Bostock was working on before he started d3, basically a declarative approach
to chart generation. With d3, he went much lower level. And while this
approach offers much greater flexibility, the learning curve is quite steep.
It's not a framework you can pick up in a day or two unless you're already
quite comfortable with Javascript, SVG, and the DOM.

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swanson
<http://tamc.github.com/Sankey/> \- found via
[http://groups.google.com/group/d3-js/browse_thread/thread/ff...](http://groups.google.com/group/d3-js/browse_thread/thread/ffab5ff980a1b068)

