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Google Visualization API
- jskopek 18y agoLooks like an extension on the Google Charts API. Google Charts offers an incredible API, and for the low cost of free, but I'm disappointed that Google still hasn't made any inroads into offering an secure HTTPS interface. Google actually has a secure version online that they use on internal projects, but it's been strictly hands-off for third parties until now.
- tptacek 18y agoThere really isn't a good way to do an annotated timeline without Flash?
- wmf 18y agoYou could use canvas or SVG, although they're less portable than Flash.
- tptacek 18y agoFlot plots vector graphs on "Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Firefox 2.x+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Konqueror 4.x+." That sounds more portable than Flash to me.
- wmf 18y agoOK, canvas is less portable than Flash but canvas plus VML kludge is more portable than Flash. Maybe Google is using Flash for the performance.
- bd 18y agoMaybe they chose Flash for performance? Google uses annotated timeline primarily for their Finance site, which has a lot of data. Long time ago, before new JS engines (FF 3.1B2, Webkit Nightly), canvas performance was not very good. I remember I abandoned my JS charting experiments because of this. For simple static graphs it was ok, but changing complex graphs based on user input was painful, redraw was not fast enough to have a smooth experience. It was especially bad on Explorer, which doesn't have native canvas support, so it must be emulated (usually using VML via ExplorerCanvas from Google [1]). I think Flot also uses ExplorerCanvas. BTW There are a pure JavaScript solutions for annotated timelines, though they look different - MIT Simile project's Timeline [2] and Timeplot [3]. [1] http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/ http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/ [2] http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/ http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/ [3] http://simile.mit.edu/timeplot/ http://simile.mit.edu/timeplot/