Introduction

The open source data visualization community is extremely rich and detailed, with many options and some really amazing libraries. Each library has its strong points and its disadvantages. Some are standalone code while others depend on other platforms such as jQuery. Some are really big and some are really small; there isn't any one option that is perfect for all opportunities, but with such a rich amount of options, the most important thing is to figure out what library is the right one for you.

There is always a trade-off when working with open source libraries, mainly when it comes to file sizes and having just too many features that drag down the speed of your application, load time, and so on. But with the richness and creativeness of the community, it's hard to avoid really fantastic charts that can be created in minutes instead of hours.

In this chapter we will explore working with some of these options. Instead of using the libraries according to the documentation of the...