Instant JQuery Flot Visual Data Analysis

Brian Peiris

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781783280650
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming in HTML
• Index: Computer Science

In Detail

Data visualization and analysis is a crucial skill in many software projects. Flot uses jQuery and HTML5 to add easy and powerful visualization capabilities to any web application. Flot produces beautiful visualizations with a minimal amount of code. It is also highly configurable, extensible, and includes many plugins out of the box.

A practical guide to take you through the basics of using Flot to visualize your data; the book describes Flots functionality in dedicated sections that include code, screenshots, and detailed explanations so that you can learn to produce charts in minutes. As you progress though this book, it will guide you through real-world examples to show you how to use statistical techniques with Flot for interactive data visualization and analysis.

Starting with the very basics, you will learn exactly what you need to do to display the simplest chart using Flot. This step-by-step guide takes you through Flots many features and settings until you can finally master the techniques youll need to apply Flot to your applications data.

You'll learn to create basic point, line, and bar charts and to use Flots stack, pie, and time plugins to create specialized chart types. Along with learning to display complex data with multiple customizable axes you will learn to make your charts interactive with Flots crosshair plugin. Finally, this book will guide you through learning statistical techniques via the jStat JavaScript library to analyse data; along with Flots errorbars and fillbetween plugins to display error margins and data percentiles.

Instant jQuery Flot Visual Data Analysis will give you a head start so that you can add data visualization features to your applications with ease.

Approach

Filled with practical, step-by-step instructions and clear explanations for the most important and useful tasks. A quick, instruction-based guide full of examples that details on the various aspects of Flot and how users can apply it to data groups for interactive data representation techniques.

Who this book is for

If you are a data visualization developer, mapping and presentation software developer, or anyone with an interest in jQuery visualization, this book is ideal for you. If you have a working knowledge of jQuery and JavaScript, you can use this book to add sophisticated visualizations to your web application so that your users can easily understand data that is crucial to them.

Instant jQuery Flot Visual Data Analysis

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Instant jQuery Flot Visual Data Analysis

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: October 2013

Production Reference: 1251013

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78328-0650

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Author

Brian Peiris

Reviewers

Alex Bliss

Marco Franssen

Mihir Mone

Acquisition Editors

Vinay Argekar

Akram Hussain

Lead Technical Editor

Manasi Pandire

Technical Editor

Novina Kewalramani

Project Coordinator

Joel Goveya

Proofreaders

Paul Hindle

Ameesha Green

Production Coordinator

Manu Joseph

Cover Work

Manu Joseph

Cover Image

Disha Haria

About the Author

Brian Peiris is a developer with a passion for the Web and all things technological. He's been programming for more than 15 years and has been a professional web developer for 7 years. Brian has followed jQuery since its inception and has used Flot extensively in commercial projects. When he's not coding, Brian enjoys tinkering with electronics, robotics, and playing the guitar and violin.

I'd like to thank my family for their support in pursuing my passion for technology, the people at Packt for the opportunity to write this book and their guidance throughout the process, and the reviewers for their time and invaluable feedback.

About the Reviewers

Alex Bliss is a software architect who enjoys planning and implementing complex software solutions to scientific and business problems, providing an effective mix of team leadership and technical knowledge. Alex enjoys implementing solutions in a wide range of fields.

Alex works for the Image Permanence Institute, maintaining their business and environmental monitoring and statistics software, as well as developing new software for various grant opportunities.

Alex has worked for over a decade in developing accessible web applications using HTML5 and JavaScript. He also has an interest in statistics and mathematical computing using Flot and jStat as well as SciPy and Matlab.

Marco Franssen is a very passionate developer from the Netherlands. During his career, he has worked on various types of software projects. These projects range from client software, distributed systems, web applications, and MS Office add-ins. Some of the techniques and languages Marco is familiar with are: C#, ASP.NET MVC, CQRS, DDD, JavaScript, NodeJS, SCRUM, Agile, and so on.

In all of these projects, Marco had a role as a lead developer or architect. Thanks to Marco's ability to think in terms of abstracts, his understanding of processes, and his analytical skills, he was able to bring all his projects success.

Marco also has a personal weblog at http://marcofranssen.nl, where he shares his knowledge with the community.

Currently, Marco is working as a lead developer for BlueKiwi, the European Enterprise Social Networking company. He is leading on all the third-party integrations from an architecture point of view. This will help him to make the next step in his career to eventually be promoted to architect. Marco has also given many workshops and presentations within Atos, BlueKiwi's mother company, sharing his knowledge and expertise with colleague developers, which is all over the world.

Mihir Mone is a postgraduate from Monash University, Australia. Although he completed his postgraduation in Network Computing; these days, he mainly does web and mobile development.

After spending some time fiddling around with routers and switches, he quickly decided to build on his passion for web development; not design but development. Building web systems and applications rather than websites with all the fancy flash animations was very interesting and alluring to him. He even returned to his alma mater to teach all about web development to pass forward what he had learned.

These days, he works for a small software/engineering house in Melbourne doing web development, and prototyping exciting new ideas in the data visualization and UX domain.

He is a Linux enthusiast and a big proponent of the OSS movement and believes that software should always be free to actualize its true potential. A true geek at heart, he spends some of his leisure time writing code in the hope that it may be helpful to the masses.

He is also a motorsport junkie, so you may find him loitering around race tracks from time to time (especially if there is Formula1 involved).

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