Chapter 1. Web Charts
In this chapter, you will learn the general background of web charts. This includes a short history of how web charts used to be made before Ajax and HTML5 became the new standard. The recent advances in JavaScript programming will be briefly discussed. Then, SVG support and the new HTML5 feature canvas, the main drive behind JavaScript charts, are introduced and demonstrated. This is followed by a quick guide to the other JavaScript graphing packages that are available on the market. Finally, we are introduced to Highcharts and will explain the advantages of using Highcharts over other products. In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- A short history of web charting
- The rise of JavaScript and HTML5
- JavaScript charts on the market
- Why Highcharts?