Actionscript Graphing Cookbook

Learn how to create appealing and interactive visual presentations of your data in ActionScript

Overview

• Learn how to create various visually dynamic graphs and charts
• Import data from different sources, such as web services
• Learn how to map geographical data, visualize in 3D

In Detail

"A picture is worth a thousand words" has never been more true than when representing large sets of data. Bar charts, heat maps, cartograms, and many more have become important tools in applications and presentations to quickly give insight into complicated issues.

The "ActionScript Graphing Cookbook" shows you how to add your own charts to any ActionScript program. The recipes give step-by-step instructions on how to process the input data, how to create various types of charts and how to make them interactive for even more user engagement.

Starting with basic ActionScript knowledge, you will learn how to develop many different types of charts.

First learn how to import your data, from Excel, web services and more. Next process the data and make it ready for graphical display. Pick one of the many graph options available as the book guides you through ActionScript’s drawing functions. And when you’re ready for it, branch out into 3D display.

The recipes in the "ActionScript Graphing Cookbook" will gradually introduce you into the world of visualization.

What you will learn from this book

• Import data from various sources
• Organize the various visual elements of a graph
• Draw many types of charts, such as bar, line and pie charts, meters and many more
• Make graphs interactive with hover and zoom effects
• Work with geographical data and maps
• Animate graphs with real time data
• Show and interact with network displays
• Discover three dimensional drawing and graphing

Approach

Step-by-step instructions guide you from your very first graphical program to highly complex 3D presentations.

Although a few recipes explain charts in Flex, this book is firmly focussed on using ActionScript code and data to draw graphs.

Who this book is written for

The "ActionScript Graphing Cookbook" is aimed at any ActionScript developer who wants to add data visualization to their skill set. The reader should be familiar with ActionScript basics, but no deep knowledge of any graphical functions is required.

Peter Backx

Peter Backx has a MoS and a PhD in Computer Sciences from Ghent University. He is a software developer and architect. He uses technology to shape unique user experiences and build rock-solid scalable software. ActionScript is his favorite tool for creating highly interactive and deeply engaging user interfaces.

Peter currently works as a freelance consultant and shares his knowledge and experiments on his blog www.streamhead.com.