Webfusion

If data is king then quality charts are the visual equivalent of Presentation Zen. We recently spoke with Torstein Hønsi, development manager at Highcharts, a web-based charting application:

How did the idea for Highcharts come about? What real world projects influenced its inception?
Back in 2003 I purchased a weather station for my private website and was unhappy with the charting software supplied. I wanted something dynamic but at the time all Flash solutions were expensive and I wasn’t too happy with the idea of urging my low-tech readers to install a plug-in. So I set out building a JavaScript solution bases on div pixels, which soon was abandoned due to the slow rendering and memory consumption.

The next effort was JavaScript tooltips laid over a chart image created by JPGraph. A good solution, but it showed the need for a native JavaScript charting solution. When vector graphics finally were available in all common browsers two or three years ago, the time was in to give it a go. By that time I had my own company, and development on Highcharts has been going on for the last two years. The configuration syntax and functionality has been inspired by projects like JPGraph, FusionCharts, AnyChart, amChart, Flotr, Ext JS and MooTools. Highcharts enables web developers and entrepreneurs to quickly set up and maintain a visual report without actually understanding much of how JavaScript works.
What are the advantages to using Javascript for the application over client side plug-ins such as Flash?

Flash is a proprietary technology, and many developers hesitate to become dependent on one specific vendor. Moreover, Flash and other plug-ins like Java or ActiveX require the end user to install a plug-in in their browser. Although Flash is very common in today, it will still confuse first-time users.

Highcharts can replace Powerpoint in a website environment. It is limited to run in a webpage, but as more and more software – including presentation programs – is becoming web based, Highcharts is the ideal data visualizer.

What are your future plans for Highcharts?

We are currently working on methods for updating the charts dynamically after render time. For example by appending a point to a series while shifting one off the screen, we will have live charts. Imagine getting refreshed data over an Ajax connection for monitoring some remote value. The next great update is to allow saving the chart as an image. In standard browsers this doesn’t raise any technical problems, but in IE the vector graphics are drawn using VML which can’t be converted directly. The solution will be to use the Chrome Frame to generate the images in IE. But as this doesn’t comply with our philosophy above, we will probably also add an option to generate the image at our servers. Other features on the roadmap are wrapper components for PHP, ASP.NET, .NET and JSFP.