Speaking of Edward Tufte (see below), sparklines are a type of information graphics characterized by their small size and data density named by Tufte. Sparklines were used by sites reporting the 2008 election and were first introduced on MeFi in 2005. There are now several ways to put sparklines on your own web site including: a simple jQuery plugin, a downloadable PHP library, a dynamic generator using a Python CGI program, and even a library for Ruby on Rails.
posted by netbros on Feb 27, 2009 - 8 comments

Easier sIFR implementation with jQuery Plug-in. Web developers or typography aficionados may remember when sIFR was first mentioned and discussed (160 comments) on MeFi: Dec. 29th, 2004. Since then, when it has been mentioned on the Blue, it has mostly been by people who dislike it (or anything remotely related to Flash). Or, as expressed this comment by TKChrist, they have found it overly-complicated to implement. For those of you interested in giving it another look: the jQuery sIFR plug-in. If you do nothing else, check out the three examples using this approach. [more inside]
posted by spock on Dec 4, 2008 - 93 comments