Flex Sparkline
February 8th, 2010
Sparklines are described by their inventor, Edward Tufte, as “data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics”. They are an ideal tool for displaying trends for single entries within large data sets, for example, stock prices. As well as the standard miniature line series, Tufte’s original specification introduces a ternary sparkline, a.k.a. win-loss sparkline, where small columns [...]
Microsoft apply for “Sparkline in the grid” patent
November 25th, 2009
Microsoft have recently submitted US patent application 20090282325, entitled Sparklines in the Grid. My initial reaction, like many others in the data visualisation community, was one of anger at what appeared a blatant attempt by Microsoft to abuse the US patent system. However, I decided to examine the application more closely in order [...]
Silverlight 4 beta released leaving Flex behind
November 19th, 2009
This post looks at the speed of development of the two leading RIA frameworks, Silverlight and Flex, giving unequivocal proof that Silverlight is better than Flex … !
This week at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC), there have been two big news stories. The first is the give-away of a free tablet PC to all attendees, and [...]
Missing values in Flex charts
April 14th, 2009
An oddness in default behaviour that can throw those new to Flex Charting is that segments in charts that should correspond to a data point are missing. By this I mean charts like those in the following example:
When what is actually desired is the following:
This is achieved by setting the filterData property on the [...]
Custom data tips in stacked Flex charts
March 24th, 2009
The number of frustrating decisions in Flex’s charting API is minimal, but high up on my list is a strange decision that prevents developers from accessing information that is frequently desirable for custom data tips in stacked area, bar and column charts. The default data tips for stacked charts display, amongst other things, the [...]
Save Flex chart as image
March 4th, 2009
The ability to allow a user to save a Flex chart, or in fact any Flex UI component, as an image has popped up on my radar several times over the last few years. Solutions to the problem have generally involved producing a pop-up window with the UI component as an image that the user [...]