Powerful Open Source Data Visualization plugins – Part 1

Analyzing data online can be a tedious task & when you have tons of data to share online – it could be challenging to make it readable & at the same time interesting for the user to understand the data. In such scenarios data visualization plugins can come in handy to visually represent your data to the user than just presenting it as plain numbers.

The main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. There are numerous Javascript plugins on the web which can help in presenting your data in multiple formats & at the same time make it interactive for the user to digest the info being shared easily. Find below are few hand picked data visualization plugins build using javascript frameworks which can make your life easier by presenting the data much more visually.

#1. JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit [JIT]

JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit - Data Visualization Plugin

The JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit provides tools for creating Interactive Data Visualizations for the Web.

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#2. Chronoscope

Chronoscope is a powerful data visualization tool which can handle huge datasets & still present it elegantly.

Chronoscope - Large Dataset visualization tool

Chronoscope supports interactive framerates on datasets with tens of thousands of points by using multiresolution representation and incremental streaming. Sending millions of elements to a user’s browser might not be a great idea, so Chronoscope supports incremental streaming of remote datasets.

The example above shows a dataset with over 18,000 points (daily US Federal Reserve Funds Rates going back to 1954).

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#3. Simile Web Widgets [MIT]

The Simile Project from MIT is a robust open source tool that allows users to access, manage, visualize and reuse digital assets. Simile project has a set of widgets which allows you to view the data as a timeline or plot on a graph & lot more…

Simile Web Widgets

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#4. Protovis [Stanford]

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.

Protovis

Protovis is free and open-source, provided under the BSD License. It uses JavaScript and SVG for web-native visualizations; no plugin required (though you will need a modern web browser)! Although programming experience is helpful, Protovis is mostly declarative and designed to be learned by example.

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#5. Highcharts – jQuery/Prototype/MooTools

Highcharts is a charting library written in pure JavaScript, offering an easy way of adding interactive charts to your web site or web application. Highcharts currently supports line, spline, area, areaspline, column, bar, pie and scatter chart types.

Highcharts - Interactive Javascript Charts

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#6. Flotr – Prototype

Flotr enables you to draw appealing graphs in most modern browsers with an easy to learn syntax. It comes with great features like legend support, negative value support, mouse tracking, selection support, zoom support, event hooks, CSS styling support and much more.

Flotr - javascript plotting library

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#7. Flot – jQuery

Flot is a pure Javascript plotting library for jQuery. It produces graphical plots of arbitrary datasets on-the-fly client-side.

The focus is on simple usage (all settings are optional), attractive looks and interactive features like zooming and mouse tracking.

Flot - Pure JS plotting library

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#8. jqPlot – jQuery

jqPlot is a plotting and charting plugin for the jQuery Javascript framework. jqPlot produces beautiful line, bar and pie charts with many features

jqPlot - Plotting plugin using jQuery

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#9. Sparklines – jQuery

This jQuery plugin generates sparklines (small inline charts) directly in the browser using data supplied either inline in the HTML, or via javascript.

The plugin is compatible with most modern browsers and has been tested with Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, Opera 9, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 6, 7 & 8.

jQuery Sparklines

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#10. Visualize – jQuery

The Visualize plugin parses key content elements in a well-structured HTML table, and leverages that native HTML5 canvas drawing ability to transform them into a chart or graph visualization.

jQuery - Visualize

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#11. Tuftegraph – jQuery

Tuftegraph is similar to Flot in creating simple & good looking graphs but the only difference being this is a bit lightweight.

Tuftegraph - jQuery

Resource: Sample | Tutorial

#12. mooChart – MooTools

moochart is a plugin for MooTools 1.2 that draws bubble diagrams on the canvas tag. Future versions might include pie, bar & line graphs.

mooChart

Resource: Sample | Tutorial