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Apache ECharts

echarts.apache.org

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Re: Apache ECharts

#151

Post by NiloCK »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #89
FredPret wrote: post #6

The line race looks so cool. https://echarts.apache.org/examples/en/editor.html?c=line-ra... Toggle the switches to trigger the race. By the way, well done Norway.

It looks neat, but unlike the Hans Rosling example someone else mentioned, the animation adds no additional information. Showing just the last frame would get the same point across much quicker and more accessible. It's a form of chartjunk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartjunk

At the risk of piling on (others have commented), I'll go so far as to say that there really is more information here if you make the gentle assumption of a human observer.

In the animated version, a human observer here is allowed (forced) to occupy mental states of a real-time observer. They have the experience of "X has jumped ahead - I wonder if it'll last - oh, wow, Y is really surging".

The visceral experience matters, and is impossible to recreate post-hoc if all of the info is presented up front.

(edit: "more information" in so far is it informs more - leaves more impressions on the observer)

Re: Apache ECharts

#152

Post by nchmy »

eigenvalue wrote: post #59
rorylaitila wrote: post #47

ECharts is in my opinion the best out there. It surprisingly doesn't come up in a lot of lists or search for charting libraries. I've tried them all: chart.js, google charts, amCharts, Highcharts, ApexCharts. We use it in our tool/library https://docs.chartsql.com/

I think that’s because it’s a Chinese Project. Same thing with Ant Design Components, which are really awesome but not as well known as they should be.

Link here, for reference. https://github.com/antvis

It seems good, but their docs websites are absolute trash (though they've seemingly gotten somewhat better recently - they were previously completely unusable).

e.g https://g6.antv.antgroup.com/

Overall, I think you cant go wrong with Apache.

Re: Apache ECharts

#153

Post by spaceribs »

stuartaxelowen wrote: post #150
lucasfcosta wrote: post #133

We've tested almost every visualization library under the sun when building Briefer ( https://briefer.cloud ) and I can confidently say that Apache ECharts is the best. The main issues with other libraries is that they're either: (a) ugly (b) difficult to use (i.e. having to do things imperatively) (c) not flexible enough Apache ECharts solve these 3 problems. It's pretty by default, it allows us to mount/calculate t…

Did you compare to vega/vega lite? Curious to hear how they compared!

I've used both, and while I think Vega has it's uses, it's not nearly as web developer friendly. Frontend engineers want a clear delineation between logic, composition and styling. By combining everything into a JSON document, you sacrifice that developer experience while introducing a lot of bespoke approaches.

That said, I absolutely love the idea that a blob of JSON living in my database contains everything I need for my visualization. The reality is that not enough other people are willing to put in the effort to learn that syntax, making it somewhat of a selfish tech choice.

Re: Apache ECharts

#155

Post by smelendez »

abirch wrote: post #55
rorylaitila wrote: post #47

ECharts is in my opinion the best out there. It surprisingly doesn't come up in a lot of lists or search for charting libraries. I've tried them all: chart.js, google charts, amCharts, Highcharts, ApexCharts. We use it in our tool/library https://docs.chartsql.com/

What about D3js? I know that D3js is low level, but with AI it's pretty easy.

Depends on the use case.

If you’re a data viz team and do this all the time, and everyone knows or is willing to learn D3, then sure. Otherwise, if you just need to add a graph to your website, you may find it slows you down and makes code less maintainable.

I personally find it confusing and as others mentioned I can forget how it works over time, though I admire it. I don’t think I could jump in and edit D3 code today without careful study, any more than I could jump in and edit Perl code. Echarts/Highcharts etc. are much more intuitive.

Re: Apache ECharts

#156

Post by leeoniya »

etimberg wrote: post #52
XCSme wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! And is it more or less performant on large datasets (100k+ data points).

maintainer of chartjs here. It’s probably more performant. Chart.js isn’t designed for a ton of data and we recommend sampling before visualization . We have a builtin plugin that does a form of min/max sampling to retain peaks but cut down on the amount of data points drawn

maintainer of uPlot here :)

they're about same for line chart rendering when using decimation in both.

Re: Apache ECharts

#157

Post by [deleted] »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #89
FredPret wrote: post #6

The line race looks so cool. https://echarts.apache.org/examples/en/editor.html?c=line-ra... Toggle the switches to trigger the race. By the way, well done Norway.

It looks neat, but unlike the Hans Rosling example someone else mentioned, the animation adds no additional information. Showing just the last frame would get the same point across much quicker and more accessible. It's a form of chartjunk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartjunk

[deleted]

Re: Apache ECharts

#158

Post by lucb1e »

Noticed it uses HTML5 canvas to render data by default. To screen readers, am I correct in understanding that this is equally accessible as when people share screenshots of text?

There is an SVG option that looks identical but it doesn't say when you're supposed to use that, or why canvas exists (and is the default) if SVG would work equally well. Then again, setting an example chart to use SVG rendering (I was looking at the basic scatter plot functionality, since I use that most often), I can't seem to tab or otherwise navigate through the data points, so it may just be impossible to get the data read out to you like "first data point, year 2006 students 25 939" (if the axes were labeled "year" and "students", for example; they're not labeled in the example but it could still read out the positions of the points)

Re: Apache ECharts

#160

Post by noduerme »

lucasfcosta wrote: post #133

We've tested almost every visualization library under the sun when building Briefer ( https://briefer.cloud ) and I can confidently say that Apache ECharts is the best. The main issues with other libraries is that they're either: (a) ugly (b) difficult to use (i.e. having to do things imperatively) (c) not flexible enough Apache ECharts solve these 3 problems. It's pretty by default, it allows us to mount/calculate t…

I must've looked at this years ago, but for whatever reason, hitched my wagon to Chart.js and haven't really needed anything it couldn't do. And that's for weird one-off custom stuff. For business analytics I just self-host a Metabase server. I wish there were more visualization options with Metabase, but it's such a cinch to set up models and queries. But I don't often get a visualization request that justifies the time to create a custom chart.
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