VizWorld.com

Protovis is a great Javascript-based data visualization toolkit for your web browser that is gaining popularity for it’s ease of use and powerful capabilities.  As browsers get more and more powerful and JavaScript engines improve, less and less of this is falling into the realm of Flash and static images, and ProtoVis is on the forefront of the change.  Robert Kosara has been teaching ProtoVis for a little while to his students, and has published the first of a series of “ProtoVis Primers” on his website.

This introduction is based on my experiences with using Protovis in my Visualization and Visual Communication class earlier this spring. While the concepts involved are really not that difficult, they are rather foreign to students who have not been exposed to functional programming. And since that is also the case for a lot of hobbyists and people wanting to do visualization who do not have a computer science background, I imagine they run into the same problems.

via A Protovis Primer, Part 1 | eagereyes.

Science education, protovis, tutorial

Many people think visualization is limited to basic pie charts, line graphs, and bar graphs, without knowing the wealth of alternatives that exist.  Over at the ACM Queue, an article showcases the “Zoo of Visualization” with some of the more exotic techniques.

In many situations, simple data graphics will not only suffice, they may also be preferable. Here we focus on a few of the more sophisticated and unusual techniques that deal with complex data sets. After all, you don't go to the zoo to see Chihuahuas and raccoons; you go to admire the majestic polar bear, the graceful zebra, and the terrifying Sumatran tiger. Analogously, we cover some of the more exotic (but practically useful!) forms of visual data representation, starting with one of the most common, time-series data; continuing on to statistical data and maps; and then completing the tour with hierarchies and networks. Along the way, bear in mind that all visualizations share a common “DNA”—a set of mappings between data properties and visual attributes such as position, size, shape, and color—and that customized species of visualization might always be constructed by varying these encodings.

All of their techniques are accompanied by a static image and an interactive example developed in ProtoVis, complete with source code for you to peruse and try yourself.

via A Tour through the Visualization Zoo – ACM Queue.

Science list, protovis, visualization

One of MIT’s TR35 Young Innovator Awards, Jeffrey Heer has created a new javascript data-visualization library called “ProtoVis”.

Protovis lets people who have only token programming skills concentrate on the design of a visualization rather than worrying about how to structure complex computer code. The software provides chunks of code that correspond to different aspects of visual information display, such as shapes and colors; users string these chunks together to c­reate a complete graphic.

The library currently does not support interactivity, but has a great collection of example visualizations showcasing it’s power.

Protovis..

Science javascript, library, protovis, web