General Description
The new high-level Charting widget is an "iWidget" that is bound to a data URL, which contains all the required chart data in (say) XML or JSON format. The end-user can choose to display this data in one of several different formats ( line, area, bar, column, table etc ...) and can also use the slider to move from 2D to 3D versions of that chart.
One of the main benefits of this high-level widget is that it becomes very simple to implement relatively complex charts on any web/mashup page. No knowledge of the underlying chart 2D/3D API's is required. Using a few lines of code to instantiate the widget, and pointing to the appropriate data URL is all that is required (this is similar to other high-level widgets for podcasts and/or videos).
(NB: The above prototype was written using Flex/iLOG components as a proof-of-concept; the production version would be written using the Dojo charting components.)
Possible features include (but are not limited to):
- Option to limit which chart-types can be used to display the data, ( eg only line and area )
- Option to set the initial/default chart-type to display the data
- Option to allow the data to be "animated" ie as the chart displays the data animates from 0 to the final value.