I currently develop a powerful JavaScript diagramming library (very different capabilities than charting), and charge more than this, though its done per domain and not per developer, with exceptions for OEM customers who need to deploy it everywhere. I'd recommend you go that route instead, most of our customers seem very happy with the model.
The charting space by contrast seems significantly bloated to me. This library may well be awesome, but I'd recommend you explain within my first minute or two on the page why this is better than the host of free options out there.
I don't understand this per-developer licensing model. Not only is it completely non-enforceable but feels really out-dated and out of touch in the era of FOSS.
I will pay for an awesome charting product, but I don't want to have to think about how many developers will touch the code, when, how or why.
Something like a license per production site or an unlimited license makes a whole lot more sense to me and allows me to quantify the cost in terms of the value it provides to my business rather than how many developers I have.
We'll be reviewing the licensing option per feedback from HN. Please send a note to [email protected], would love to hear more about what you think would be reasonable :)
I like the interaction layer (at least the way it's described). The per-developer pricing for this is really strange though. If I implement this in an app, it may start out as my app, and then other developers may collaborate later on, sometimes temporarily. How much would this cost? I have no idea, so I'd probably skip it entirely for any project.
Agree - Flotr2 is awesome. To be fair this library seems to offer a little more in terms of interactive charts, which I don't think FLotr2 does much (I know you can kind of get 'selection' in pie charts, but I don't know of anything else).
This looks quite awesome!
As a quick suggestion, the wiki (https://github.com/polychart/polychart2/wiki) recommends using github as the CDN which I thought was highly discouraged. However I can't find any official stance on this anymore..did it change?
This is pretty cool, but $300 is a lot to pay, even for commercial use. There are a lot of free client-side charting projects out there. Charts.js was a recent one on HN: http://www.chartjs.org/
While this new one does offer interaction between charts, that wouldn't be too hard to add into other existing free projects that have event systems to hook into.
Agrees with you that Raphael is very awesome. A difference between Polychart.js and NVD3 is its flexibility: the way one can overlay charts, or even plot any change in polar coordinates. (We took a lot of ideas from R and ggplot2, something data scientists use).
We share your love with d3 also, which unfortunately will not ever work in IE. So until the rest of the world catches up... ;)
False. You do not support basic guides like highcharts, you are not the most intuitive and interactive for the browser... yet.
It seems like this feature is the most overlooked, and it is one of their strongest selling points. As you mouse along the chart regardless of your y axis it has guides that will show the datapoint tooltip information closest to your x axis if you have a line selected or have mouseover'd a line.
Your charting library is however well thought out, there are a few features that I would be interested in seeing from morris.js and rickshaw.
Would like to see a demo with a larger data set size (say, zoomable scatter plot with thousands of points). And an option to edit the demo in jsfiddle.
Thanks for the comment and the feedback on the pricing. Please email [email protected] for a discount or alternative model just for HN readers, or if you have other feedback!
It's hard to evaluate when the projects are so new. It was a similar problem with Crossfilter/Datavore/Data.js/Miso Dataset when they all came out.
If I had to pick, I'd go with Vega because I think it has the most potential to develop a community around it. Especially as a bridge between Python/R and D3.js through JSON. Think iPython notebooks, R Shiny, etc.
The interaction model is something that very few charting libraries have. Also we try to make Polychart.js very easy to get started in, so that creating a simple line or bar chart would take minimal amount of code. Vega is amazing as well for how flexible it is.
D3 takes ages to build graphs with. That's why NVD3 made such big news.
What you get when you buy a license is support. Which I remember was the main reason we had for not choosing NVD3 last time, and went with a library with much better documentation.
[+] [-] simonsarris|13 years ago|reply
The charting space by contrast seems significantly bloated to me. This library may well be awesome, but I'd recommend you explain within my first minute or two on the page why this is better than the host of free options out there.
[+] [-] recursive|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solox3|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradleyjoyce|13 years ago|reply
I will pay for an awesome charting product, but I don't want to have to think about how many developers will touch the code, when, how or why.
Something like a license per production site or an unlimited license makes a whole lot more sense to me and allows me to quantify the cost in terms of the value it provides to my business rather than how many developers I have.
[+] [-] xuexue|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wheaties|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] venomsnake|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JangoSteve|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fournm|13 years ago|reply
It looks really nice, though, definitely good job.
[+] [-] xuexue|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fein|13 years ago|reply
It's free, and I don't see many features added that flotr2 doesn't have.
http://humblesoftware.com/flotr2/documentation
[+] [-] joseph_cooney|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bensedat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niggler|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dominic_cocch|13 years ago|reply
While this new one does offer interaction between charts, that wouldn't be too hard to add into other existing free projects that have event systems to hook into.
I'd say $50 - $99 would make it more worthwhile.
[+] [-] halayli|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonahx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xuexue|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hmottestad|13 years ago|reply
Alternatives to Raphael is d3.
Alternatives all together is NVD3. If you haven't seen this one, go check it out.
[+] [-] xuexue|13 years ago|reply
We share your love with d3 also, which unfortunately will not ever work in IE. So until the rest of the world catches up... ;)
[+] [-] polychartjs|13 years ago|reply
Polychart.js can now be licensed under a per-domain or per-company license. We continue to offer discounts to startups (as we're one ourself!)
[+] [-] timjahn|13 years ago|reply
Otherwise, why wouldn't people simply buy 1 license and have as many developers as needed work on the codebase?
[+] [-] xfour|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nijiko|13 years ago|reply
It seems like this feature is the most overlooked, and it is one of their strongest selling points. As you mouse along the chart regardless of your y axis it has guides that will show the datapoint tooltip information closest to your x axis if you have a line selected or have mouseover'd a line.
Your charting library is however well thought out, there are a few features that I would be interested in seeing from morris.js and rickshaw.
[+] [-] mturmon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shrikant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namank|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polychartjs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philvb|13 years ago|reply
https://github.com/trifacta/vega
[+] [-] oscilloscope|13 years ago|reply
If I had to pick, I'd go with Vega because I think it has the most potential to develop a community around it. Especially as a bridge between Python/R and D3.js through JSON. Think iPython notebooks, R Shiny, etc.
[+] [-] xuexue|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MBlume|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] recursive|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmgunn87|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avolcano|13 years ago|reply
(do agree with other comments that per-dev pricing is a bad model, though)
[+] [-] hmottestad|13 years ago|reply
What you get when you buy a license is support. Which I remember was the main reason we had for not choosing NVD3 last time, and went with a library with much better documentation.
[+] [-] jmgunn87|13 years ago|reply