One of the research tracks within the Search Computing project deals with Visual Interfaces and User Interaction for Search Computing. There are plenty of JavaScript libraries out there for rendering data. This post lists 5 data visualization tools that we considered for our experiments and prototypal applications.

  • The Javascript Information Visualization Toolkit: The JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit provides tools for creating Interactive Data Visualizations for the Web. JIT supports multiple data representations (Treemaps, Radial Layouts, HyperTrees/Graphs, SpaceTree-like Layouts, etc), it works in the most recent versions of major browsers (IE6+, Firefox2+, Safari3+, Opera9.5+ ). JIT is licensed under the BSD License.
  • Stanford Protovis: Protovis is free and open-source, provided under the BSD License. It uses JavaScript and SVG for web-native visualizations. Although programming experience is helpful, Protovis is mostly declarative and designed to be learned by example.
  • Flare: Flare is an ActionScript library for creating visualizations that run in the Adobe Flash Player. From basic charts and graphs to complex interactive graphics, the toolkit supports data management, visual encoding, animation, and interaction techniques. Flare is open-source software released under a BSD license.
  • Processing.js: Processing.js is an open programming language for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions for the web without using Flash or Java applets. Processing.js uses Javascript to draw shapes and manipulate images on the HTML5 Canvas element. The code is light-weight, simple to learn and makes an ideal tool for visualizing data, creating user-interfaces and developing web-based games. Processing.js is explicitly developed for browsers that support the HTML5 <Canvas> element. Processing.js runs in FireFox, Safari, Opera and Chrome but will not be supported in Internet Explorer until Mircosoft catch up with ISSUE 15.
  • Raphaël: Raphaël uses the SVG W3C Recommendation and VML as a base for creating graphics. This means every graphical object you create is also a DOMobject, so you can attach JavaScript event handlers or modify them later. Raphaël currently supports Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+.

copy right note: The content of this post has been  cut and pasted from the respective technologies’ Web sites, to increase their awarness.