Creating Graphs & Charts

[markbrown4]

@kduv

You cannot give someone more tea if their teacup is already full.

[system]

I don’t mind the fact that she didn’t know what GIT was.

What bothered me was how arrogant she was to the guy suggesting she use it, and her arrogance was based on her ignorance of GIT.

Ignorant people who think they know it all and who respond with arrogance and derision to people who know what they are talking about really bother me.

It’s just her attitude I take issue with. If she doesn’t know how something works or what something does, that’s cool, and I’ll help out where I can (I learn new stuff from people all the time - I just don’t pretend to know it all), but if she’s gonna effectively say that people who use Javascript are amateurs who are using ‘toys’ when “professionals” like her are creating ‘content’, then I’m gonna call her up on her crap.

[HAWK]

I’ve edited your post no#17 slightly @aaarrrggh ; because while I agree with your sentiment and have no issue with your message, it’s not cool to make personal insults around here, and your post did cross that line.

Let’s get back on topic now before this turns into an argument that has to be shut down.

[EnderMB]

@DoubleDee

1.) Because I associate JavaScipt with poorly planned and architected websites. It is a child’s toy in most instances.

The more JS a site has, usually the more obnoxious it is…

Usually, I would agree with you. One of my current favourite sites is the D programming language forum because there is little to no JavaScript and the pages load as fast as they would if it were a native application. Modern developers are too quick to run to the loving arms of jQuery to do everything and I despise the overuse of JavaScript and the horrific page sizes of some sites.

However, calling JS a child’s toy without anything to back it up with is insane. Sure, it’s a pretty poor language that has made some shocking design decisions, but it’s the best we’ve got to add any kind of dynamic client-side functionality to a web page. Browser vendors have done some fantastic work in increasing the speed and power of their JavaScript engines and the power you can be afforded with some JS is quite remarkable.

@DoubleDee

I might be more flexible on charting solutions, since that is an area which wouldn’t be an effective use of my time “rolling my own”. And yet at the same time, it is my experience that there are often solutions that meet my constraints and still deliver.

Well, if you’re not going to use a “charting solution” then you’re either rolling your own charting script or using an image. There really isn’t any other way around it.

Either way, I’ve used Highcharts for some high-end clients and if you’ve got the patience to read through the documentation and test your JS using jsFiddle then there’s nothing better. I’m afraid it’s the best you’re going to find.

[Markdidj]

Hi DoubleDee. If you want to create charts and graphs look in to writing dynamic CSS sheets in PHP.
Simple bar graphs are easy, you just change the size of the divs. Pie charts are a little more complicated but there are a lot of new commands you can use, like rotation and skew.

When it’s done, you could enhance it with a timed javascript style switcher which would make them live.

[Lemon_Juice]

@ULTiMATE

Well, if you’re not going to use a “charting solution” then you’re either rolling your own charting script or using an image. There really isn’t any other way around it.

Yes, there is - SVG. I’ve done it once in an administration system and it’s pretty easy to create simple charts with SVG and they don’t require javascript (however, IE 8 and earlier don’t run SVG without the help of a js library). You can style elements with CSS and even add dynamic stuff with js.

That said, I agree that javascript is a very good tool for charts. Some time ago I used Raphaël - it’s a js library that creates charts in SVG. What I did was I put my data into an ordinary HTML table and then used javascript to read the table and convert it to a chart using Raphaël. That worked well, was accessible and also looked very nice on mobile devices (edit - sorry for equalling mobile devices with iPhone and iPad only, I checked only in those…).

[cpradio]

This thread is over a year old that was recently resurrected (for unknown reasons), I’m closing it. If you feel there is something new to discuss because a year has gone by, please fee free to either 1) open a new thread or 2) contact me and I’ll gladly reopen it.