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Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

vis.stanford.edu

11–20 of 23 posts

Re: Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

#11
post #6

See also d3, a newer visualization framework from the same primary author. Similar to protovis but with a greater focus on updating and animation. http://mbostock.github.com/d3/

Thanks for the reference! But actually it doesn't appear to be a visualization framework, it's a transformation framework: "D3 does not provide a new graphical representation—unlike Processing, Raphaël, or Protovis, there is no new vocabulary of marks to learn. Instead, you build directly on standards such as CSS3, HTML5 and SVG."

For example, you could use this framework to build an HTML table or an SVG document directly.

Re: Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

#13
post #6

See also d3, a newer visualization framework from the same primary author. Similar to protovis but with a greater focus on updating and animation. http://mbostock.github.com/d3/

Thanks for the reference! But actually it doesn't appear to be a visualization framework, it's a transformation framework: "D3 does not provide a new graphical representation—unlike Processing, Raphaël, or Protovis, there is no new vocabulary of marks to learn. Instead, you build directly on standards such as CSS3, HTML5 and SVG." For example, you could use this framework to build an HTML table or an SVG document dir…

I get the technical distinction, but the general purpose is still primarily to visualize no?

Re: Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

#14

Can anyone suggest a JS library that allows u to plot semilog graphs and log log graphs please... Do any of the above support it? At least it is not shown in the galleries...

If I get it correctly, semi-log graph is just about scales, not about different representation, right? So then yeah, it's not hard with protovis:

http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/docs/scale.html

Re: Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

#15
post #6

See also d3, a newer visualization framework from the same primary author. Similar to protovis but with a greater focus on updating and animation. http://mbostock.github.com/d3/

Thanks for the reference! But actually it doesn't appear to be a visualization framework, it's a transformation framework: "D3 does not provide a new graphical representation—unlike Processing, Raphaël, or Protovis, there is no new vocabulary of marks to learn. Instead, you build directly on standards such as CSS3, HTML5 and SVG." For example, you could use this framework to build an HTML table or an SVG document dir…

That's literally true, but in practice D3 makes for (and is intended as) an effective Protovis replacement. The set of primitive marks in Protovis is close to that of SVG, in any case.

These libraries' primary author (Mike Bostok) views D3 as the successor to protovis:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/d3-js/UAEmdL4XArw/CfB4S-60u9...

In particular:

"I would recommend switching to D3. I have no current plans to release a new Protovis version."

Re: Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

#16
I used this library for internal tool at Groupon. It does a lot for you, it is very versatile, however it is not without it's problems, some special effects we had hard time doing. We really pushed it to the limit there, with interaction and some things were harder to pull off. Never had to worry about IE7 because it was internal tool and we could ask for which browser to use. I would recommend it to build solutions that are more complex graphing.

Re: Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

#17
post #2

This library just pushed JavaScript to the top of the "to learn for real" list for me. It looks like a great tool.

You might also want to checkout another supercool JS visualization framework - http://thejit.org

Thanks, it looks amazing! :).

Re: Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

#18

I would love to be able to use Protovis but as an SVG-only toolkit it is not very practical if you have to provide a good experience to MSIE 7 & 8 users - see http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/protovis... (Yeah, I know, if they wanted a good experience why would they use IE7? But I think we have to live with IE8 for a good while.)

While not ideal, you can fallback to SVGWeb (using Flash 10) for older browsers. Some members of the Protovis community have released some updates to make this work: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/protovis/GoD5ihZzZlg

Re: Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

#19
post #14

Can anyone suggest a JS library that allows u to plot semilog graphs and log log graphs please... Do any of the above support it? At least it is not shown in the galleries...

If I get it correctly, semi-log graph is just about scales, not about different representation, right? So then yeah, it's not hard with protovis: http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/docs/scale.html

Awesome thanks a lot :)!!!

Re: Protovis - a graphical data visualization framework using JavaScript and SVG

#20

I'm looking through the source, specifically the jsDoc comments. Does anybody know what "[v]" means in this context: * @param {function} f function to execute on each value in the array. * @param [v] object to use as the first argument to the first call of As I understand it, the parameter type is specified with curly brackets, like, "{function}" in the line above.

"v" is the variable name, and the square brackets around it mean it's optional. There is no type specified for this parameter, so nothing in curly brackets.
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