Observable Plot 0.6.1

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

Our great sponsors
  • SurveyJS - Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
  • plot

    A concise API for exploratory data visualization implementing a layered grammar of graphics

  • d3

    Bring data to life with SVG, Canvas and HTML. :bar_chart::chart_with_upwards_trend::tada:

    Some context: D3.js (https://d3js.org) is a popular and influential JavaScript library for building data-driven visualizations. There are a zillion awesome examples of using it to create all variety of diagrams with animations, interactivity, and live data sources. Arguably, D3 doesn't know much about any specific type of visualization, but it's the toolkit to assemble whatever you want.

    Observable Plot is a related library which focuses on the higher level task of generating specific common plots and charts.

    Compare a bar chart in D3 (https://observablehq.com/@d3/bar-chart) with Observable Plot (https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/plot-bar). The former involves creating SVG elements, the latter is just a function call.

    The APIs are worth studying because they've decomposed visualization into elemental components that can be recombined. Using D3 can be like writing React for the first time, requiring a new mindset.

    Both libraries come from the same prolific author, Mike Bostock (@mbostock here), who previously worked on visualizations for the New York Times. Mike's new company, Observable (https://observablehq.com), a very thoughtful take on computational notebooks, is also worth a look.

    I've been secretly hoping he'll take on Graphviz next.

  • SurveyJS

    Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

Suggest a related project

Related posts