visualizing data

November 6, 2008 1:01 PM

20 Useful Visualization Libraries from the excellent A Beautiful WWW. Well, not entirely limited to libraries. Useful stuff for visualization practitioners sounded a little non-specific, though. These are all freely available.

A Beautiful WWW created by Todd Holloway.

posted by nickyskye (11 comments total)

this looks useful. bookmarked for future reference. thanks for the link!
posted by fuzzypantalones at 1:07 PM on November 6, 2008

This is great. Thanks.
posted by MarshallPoe at 1:22 PM on November 6, 2008

Crushed in our loving embrace? I canna get it to load, I would like to very much.

Has anyone who can get to it Coral Cached it?
posted by sidereal at 2:57 PM on November 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh gee sidereal, "crushed in our loving embrace" is such a good metaphor. Now I can't get to the site either. Guess it will need to be a delayed gratification, in a few hours. It's worth it though. :)
posted by nickyskye at 3:06 PM on November 6, 2008

I'm pretty sure I stole it from another MeFite...
posted by sidereal at 3:13 PM on November 6, 2008

aww sidereal, so humble.
posted by nickyskye at 3:42 PM on November 6, 2008

The 20, so says google's cache:
* Prefuse (Java) & FLAIR (Flex)
* simile (AJAX)
* Processing (Java)
* GigaPan (Service)
* Modest Maps (Flash, Python)
* Google Visualization API (Javascript)
* Google Chart API (Javascript)
* Google Maps API (Javascript, Flash)
* GraphViz (Wrappers for a dozen languages including Java, Perl, Python.  Free.) 
* JFree (Java)
* pChart (PHP)
* OpenLayers (JavaScript)
* Anti-Grain (C++)
* JGraph (Java)
* Boost Graph Library (C++, phyton wrapper)
* Open Flash Chart (Flash)
* Ubigraph (Wrappers for Python, Java, C, and more)
* JUNG (Java)
* TimeMap (Java)
* Many Eyes (online service)
posted by Ogre Lawless at 4:03 PM on November 6, 2008 [4 favorites]

Great list! (The blog post itself has thumbnails of each tool/library/site, which gives at least a vague idea of what you can expect from them.)

And just to add to the resource here, I'll say that I've been happy with [an earlier version of] XML/SWF Charts, which is a nice system for embedding charts on websites with custom everything. I'd guess it mainly "competes" with pChart and Open Flash Chart from the list above.

It's a good time to be a visualizer.
posted by whatnotever at 5:21 PM on November 6, 2008

YAY it's up and running again. w00t. How kind and practical of you Ogre Lawless to post the links individually.
posted by nickyskye at 5:29 PM on November 6, 2008

This is just what I needed. Thank you.
posted by b33j at 12:40 AM on November 7, 2008

Awesome resources, thanks a lot. I'm actually working on a school project that would (and probably will now) benefit highly from that SIMILE Timeline. Good stuff.
posted by kryptondog at 7:32 AM on November 7, 2008