Is there any Canvas library that is like d3.js (is svg library). I have a website here and I coded a graph with svg elements however it is not efficient on smart phone's browsers and works so slow. I now, want to change it with a 2d canvas type of it and see whether it is better or not. Can you suggest a canvas library that is useful for this purpose?
Thanks...
D3 is not necessarily an svg only library - svg is used in many cases, but the library can do any kind of representations that you would like to make. See this example of parallel coordinates using canvas in D3, by Kai Chang: http://bl.ocks.org/2409451
Also see here for some discussion on performance issues, etc, that might be helpful: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/d3-js/mtlTsGCULVQ/discussion
I know I am late to the party, but times have changed, and I believe this question deserves an updated answer. SVG performance has improved a lot over the years and especially for the non-trivial graph-like visualizations it often gives superior performance; but it really depends on the exact use-case: If the visualization is simple and consists of thousands of elements, especially on mobile, Canvas may be the faster option. If the visualization is almost trivial, WebGL gives the best performance and beats Canvas hands-down - especially on mobile!
However WebGL especially and also Canvas are a bit harder to use than the declarative approach that SVG uses. Things like CSS animations and transitions are easy to do with SVG and give good performance due to being hardware accelerated and totally independent of JavaScript performance. Canvas and WebGL always require JavaScript.
If you take a look at the commercial graph drawing library yFiles for HTML you will see that it offers all three technologies at the same time. This is because all three can be the best choice, depending on the exact use-case.
There is a blog entry that compares the performance of SVG, Canvas, and WebGL especially in the context of graph visualization. It compares various graph sizes and categories of devices. The "conclusion" is that there is not a clear winner. Often times the combination of all three technologies gives the best results. For smaller graphs, though, SVG most of the time gives very good results and is a pleasure to work with. That's also the reason why d3.js has its focus on SVG, rather than Canvas and WebGL, I would say.
There is an interactive demo linked from that blog entry that let's you play with the various technologies and see their strengths and weaknesses. Of course the demo mainly compares the three technologies used in that specific library so your results may vary, but they spent a lot of time optimizing all three technologies in that library, so I think the results are not too biased.
Disclaimer: I work for the company that creates the above mentioned library, but I do not represent my employer here on SO. I think what I said should be valid not just for that library.
For the Samsung Olympic Genome Project facebook app, we used http://thejit.org to make the force directed graph style animation for the app. It's heavily modified by me and others on my team of course, and only plays a very small part in the app, but it's quite a powerful framework.
Chart.js is a javascript library that just came out that creates charts using HTML5 for rendering. Its not as feature inclusive as D3, but it is working to become exactly that in the future. http://www.chartjs.org/
Take a look at Cytoscape.JS which uses a HTML5 canvas for rendering. At the time of writing this it's in its infancy but the project seems promising. According to its wiki the library supports both desktop and mobile browsers:
Cytoscape.js is easily integrated into your webapp, especially since
Cytoscape.js supports both desktop browsers, like Chrome, and mobile
browsers, like on the iPad.
Related
I have been following the expressive web site. I have done some R&D of the site on the google but did n't get the satisfactory link that explains the concept that how the site is being made.
Although i know that it is made in html5, css3 but i was looking for some sample code that will help me to do some coding stuff of it.
Can anyone help me into this?
"the expressive web" was made to impress developers with the new amazing creative possibilities of the HTML5 and CSS3. But it is a toy example. Underlying technology is as simple as bunch of divs animated and transformed with the css. It's all about tedious production and impressive artistic effort.
The most suitable technology for this kind of tasks is WebGL. And it's, actually, will be easier to implement.
Here some reasons to consider:
At this moment HTML5 + CSS realisation, probably, has large coverage. But still you can't run it on older browsers or use shims because it's too heavy and it even don't work properly in all modern browsers. So you will end up with flash\html5 video fallback anyway.
It's really bad for the DOM render time.
This way you are stuck with the simple geometry and no lighting effects or shaders.
You can implement it with the simple particle system or morphing and almost all of your code will be executed on the GPU so it will have pereformence really close to native code and will save battery for the handhelds.
It's really inextensible. You can't just scale up for desktops and scale down for handheld. But with WebGL it's trivial including simplifying of the geometry.
CSS + HTML has performance overhead because every side of an object is part of the DOM.
There is no tools(as far as i know) to work with assets for this kind of graphic effects. But you can find plenty of software(including free ones) to work with such frameworks as three.js or other common 3D pipeline tools including really simple to use declarative frameworks like http://www.x3dom.org/
I've got a good amount of experience with 2D rendering on <canvas>, however there is a project coming up where I need to have a 3D object rotating left along its centre (I believe z-axis). Luckily this is all I need to achieve. The page will run on iPads at an upcoming event.
I'm not experienced with any 3D software/libraries aside from minimal playing around with Papervision 3D in Flash.
I can pick things up pretty easily, so:
Are there any frameworks I can use to take care of the initial stuff?
Are there any open-source projects that include the code to do the above? If not, tutorials to do it are fine.
How do I create the 3D object? Is this the same as a BitmapMaterial in Papervision?
Threejs can be a good library to start with too.
Their "getting started" article is awesome.
There's a GLGE, for example.
GLGE is a javascript library intended to ease the use of WebGL; which is basically a native browser javascript API giving direct access to openGL ES2, allowing for the use of hardware accelerated 2D/3D applications without having to download any plugins.
The aim of GLGE is to mask the involved nature of WebGL from the web developer, who can then spend his/her time creating richer content for the web.
Three.js is pretty awesome, just wanted to point you to this github repo as well
http://lamberta.github.com/html5-animation/ check out the examples in part 4.
Billy Lamberta authored Foundation HTML5 Animation with JavaScript, which is a great book teaching you the math/etc. behind doing things like this if you are interesting in getting a little deeper understanding.
Requirements:
List item
entirely client-side (except maybe conversion to image)
export to image
able to print chart
user interactivity (hover annotation)
multiple axis
price < $300 per site
IE6/7/8 compatibility optional
I've looked at the following:
List item
Highchart
rGraph
Zingchart
infoVis toolkit
jQuery Flot
Protovis
jqPlot
Which would you recommend based on your (or your team's) experiences?
Considering the following aspects:
List item
ease of use/learning curve
ease of extension/customizability
range of available charts/themes, aesthetics
level of support/buginess
Not to be a pain and sidestep you, but - and I say this as a Canvas lover - the best charting package I've used is gRaphael, which uses SVG/VML and not Canvas.
http://g.raphaeljs.com/
You tagged this as "canvas" and "html5" only but gRaphael fulfills most of your requirements. It is especially easy to use, and the learning curve is better, as SVG generally requires a lot less code to get a rich user experience than Canvas-based libraries do.
Here is the plugin for exporting-to-image for raphael-based apps
I'm not sure about the printing situation, but since it is SVG you ought to be able to print with less fuss than if you were using Canvas, but I don't think raphael has anything additional built in to deal with printing.
Of course, using SVG means that performance will suffer more if you plan on making a highly complex/large app with lots of animation and interactivity, but that is pretty unlikely in the world of charting, unless you're trying to win a "most nauseating way to present information" award or something.
I earnestly think you should start prototyping your app with gRaphael first. You should be able to get something up quicker than with a Canvas library which will let you evaluate fairly quickly whether it will be a good fit or not.
#Xerion - I'm on the ZingChart team. Zing should fit the bill pretty well, as it renders in HTML5 Canvas, SVG, VML, and/or Flash for compatibility and various scenarios. Simon had a great point about SVG -- more complex charts (data, features or otherwise) tend to cause SVG to fall behind Canvas in performance. See different scenarios here http://www.zingchart.com/#speedtest.
Feel free to contact me abegin[at]zingchart.com with any questions, or mention/follow us at twitter.com/zingchart.
Thanks.
I'm looking into providing several methods of visualizing a large volume of data. This may include, but will not be limited to, simple graphing. The techniques I'm exploring will involve shapes, text and lines. It will also involve interaction with elements (hiding, focusing, etc.) and animation (shifting, dragging, systematic reorganizing, etc.) of those elements.
SVG or Canvas seem like the obvious choices (in conjunction with a JS library--probably jQuery), but the lack of cross-browser availability is a concern. I'd prefer to avoid Flash/Flex, but right now it's the only rock solid, cross-browser technology I've found if support for IE7/8 is a requirement.
Does anyone have any other suggestions or any additional information that would make a technology I've listed seem even more appealing?
Thanks.
Check out the original Processing.org.
It may seem strange/anachronistic that they are using Java applets, but they were able to get better performance with Java than JavaScript. The applets seem to work everywhere, and you'll have access to lots of great Java libraries.
Don't think I saw this one mentioned: JavaScript InfoViz Toolkit
An interesting visualization I personally like is the treemap view. Nice for summarizing a lot of data in a single view.
You might want to take a look at Raphael and GRaphael. Raphael allows you to create vector graphics and will use SVG on SVG-capable browsers while automatically switching to VML on IE.
You could also take a look at the canvas-based processing.js.
HighCharts is a Javascript, good, free and cross-browser charting tool.
Take a look at the Highcharts demo
SVG is available on everything except IE, and VML is available on IE (since 5.5, IIRC). If you can serve both SVG and VML, you'll have vector graphics that virtually everyone can see. RaphaelJS is a Javascript library that can generate both formats from the same Javascript code, but of course that's just one way to do it.
Canvas is also available pretty much on everything except IE, but some crazy people wrote something called excanvas that emulates Canvas in, again, VML. From my friends and coworkers who have used it, I've heard the performance is worse than pretty much any other browser graphics solution, but if you want to do bitmap graphics portably, it's pretty much the only non-plugin game in town.
Which route you take -- vector or raster -- really depends on your application.
You might also try Protovis. (http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/)
SVG and Canvas works for relatively simple data (i.e. where a few lines are enough). For complex data (say, frequency distributions, or something where you emit one sample per pixel), you should render a normal image on the server.
If you are using jquery for the graphing, I would definiately check out Flot which is as cross browser graphing/charting library.
A long time ago (Netscape 4-era), I wrote Javascript-based games: Pong, Minesweeper, and John Conway's Life among them. I'm getting back into it, and want to get my hands even dirtier.
I have a few games in mind:
Axis & Allies clone, with rugged maps and complex rules.
Tetris clone, possibly with real-time player-vs-player or player-vs-computer mode
Breakout clone, with a couple weapons and particle velocities
In all of these, I have only a few objectives:
Use JavaScript and HTML 5 - it should run on Chrome, Safari, or maybe an iPad.
Start small and simple, then build-up features.
Learn something new about game design and implementation.
So my questions are:
How would you implement these games?
Do you have any technology recommendations?
If you've written these games, what was the hardest part?
N.B.
I also want to start from first-principles - if you recommend a framework/library, I would appreciate some theory or implementation details behind it. These games are different enough that I should learn something new from each one.
Depends how much you want to start from scratch. To answer your direct questions:
1) How would you implement these games?
A: JavaScript + Canvas. Canvas is the 2D drawing surface from HTML5. Performance is pretty good on desktop machines, not so great on iOS and Android devices (as of the date of this post). If mobile is your utmost concern, you need to use the DOM and CSS3 3D transforms which trigger the GPU on those devices.
2) Do you have any technology recommendations?
A: This is sort of answered by the first question. JavaScript is a must, but I would ignore jQuery. You are targeting HTML5 devices, so no need to compensate for legacy browsers. As you are probably using Canvas, no need to smooth over the DOM interaction, either. There are some higher level libraries which make interacting with Canvas easier, such as Easel.js. WebSockets are useful for bi-directional streaming communication. And Box2D is useful for a physics engine. Local Storage is simple key/value string data for things like level progress, but for anything complex, you'll want WebSQL DB. For large binary assets you'll want to look at the File System API. Finally, don't be afraid of WebGL, as it is extremely fast and useful for 2D games.
3) What is the hardest part?
A: Almost certainly the hardest part is the debugging. WebKit's Developer Tools can make this easier, so don't leave home without them.
Put simply use Canvas for moving lots of stuff around the screen and SVG for prettier, slower, vector graphics.
One of the first things you should do is write a speed test program to see what can be done with Canvas and then play with it.
I wrote a blog post about Canvas & writing HTML5 games
edit 2019-02: processing.js is old and not well supported. Instead, try p5.js, which is equivalent and up to date.
Don't forget processing.js, which is a pretty well tested full-stack graphics and interactivity javascript framework, which has substantial (if not comprehensive) support for most I/O, sounds, graphics, and even WebGL. If you write vanilla Processing code, which is basically Java syntax compiled to JavaScript, you can use many open-source debuggers out there, including the native Processing environment. Other than that, you can integrate any other JavaScript code you have a mind to include.
Here is a guide for the JavaScript developer, explaining much of what you might want to know.
Check it out. Good stuff.
The hardest part, for me, was that there were no tools to help make the graphics, as there is no Maya export to canvas, for example, so, everything is done manually, with primitives, unless you want to take bitmaps that you will modify as though they are sprites.
At the time there was no real support for text in canvas, so my solution didn't work using excanvas, but worked fine on Safari and Firefox.
So, you may want to look at what HTML5 features you want to support, such as a built-in database, and then decide which browsers you are willing to work on.
How to implement these will largely depend on how you want to create the graphics, and if you want to do 3D graphics, as then the bitmapped sprites would not work.
Tom here from Scirra (Construct 2 game maker). We make an HTML5 games engine called Construct 2, it exports purely to HTML5 no Flash in sight!
Construct 2 uses an event based system to add logic to your games and does tons of the repetitive/difficult legwork for you. For example adding polygon collision to objects without some visual editor is a difficult task to undertake sometimes.
Anyway we think it's worth a look and you can get results very quickly from it as well. It's an alternative to coding the entire game you might want to take into consideration when developing HTML5 games.
Take a look at ChromeExperiments The examples are from around the world using the latest open standards, including HTML5, Canvas, SVG, and javascript.
Maybe this is not what you wanted to hear, but have you thought of starting with a good book?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=html5%20game
A good book will save you a lot of time, and start you off right at the basics.
A good question when I also started to learn HTML5 I also came across this question, finally after lot of research I found best way to do is by using some engine or framework. I learned canvas and made my own game but that took hours of logic and 100+ lines of code.
Better go with scirra, it might reduce your work.
I'm currently working on a series of blog posts explaining how to build a Javascript game using EaselJS and Box2D for physics. Here's Part 1.