[muyueh]

I build visualizations with d3.js for my clients (http://muyueh.com/42/), and I have always wonders whether I will be one day replaced by library such as c3.js.

I have been watching closely different library, and felt that most of the library are just providing default value to d3.js, plus adding some nice plug-in (such as tooltips). If we are looking for a bar chart, then it's very fast to use a bar chart library to build what we want. Yet some problems may occur:

1. Control, we thought that we need bar chart, but we actually need bar chart’. In my process of developing effective visual, I often need to access different part of the API.

2. Choice, currents charts provided by most of the library are available in Google Charts and Excel. This might a question of time: these library are fairly new, and maybe in the near future these library will provide all visualization available in the d3.js page. But maybe it’s not because of time, but of complexity. If these library were providing better abstraction, it should be easier to develop more complex charts.

3. Extendability: We probably don't just need the bar-chart as a stand alone visual, but as building block that can interact with other component (texts or maps).

An interesting question is to ask why d3.js was designed so “low level”, why not directly releasing a “high level library”? My hypothesis is that maybe this is the right level of abstraction. When you tried to get “higher”, you actually lose power/control over your visual. Maybe that’s the reason why people are sharing a lot of their work on http://bost.ocks.org/, doing some small experiments, laying down some building block, perhaps currently that is the most efficient way of building re-usable chart.

I shared my thought on the issue, in hope that people challenge my hypothesis: my current work depends on it.

[webmdee]

I agree with your points, which is why I have been hesitant to try out these wrappers around d3.

It is nice to have tool tips and other bells and whistles outbid the box though. I wonder if anybody has tried to do a more complex visualization (hierarchical bar chart for example) in one of these wrappers?

[bengali3]

Nice work. I really like http://muyueh.com/30/hexagon/

First find attempt I got 85 seconds Second 23 seconds Third 185

[muyueh]

Thanks, that one together with Chernoff's facial hairs (http://muyueh.com/30/chernoff/) are two visuals that I really enjoyed doing, but a bit too "geek" for the average user (Your compliments was actually the first one I get from that graph).

It was part of my initiative 30 days of d3.js, a pretty solid way to learn d3.js by the way.