How powerful can graphing be in IE6?

Question

I'm interested in developing a web-based application with rich time series charting functionality, where the charts can be constructed and manipulated on the client side. I would like the chart surface to be highly interactive, with the ability to pan and zoom with the mouse, click on lines, axes, etc. Importantly, I would prefer not to use Flash, AND I need to support Internet Explorer 6. My question is, is there anything out there that is going to allow me to do this, or must I use Flash? I have seen good charts that use the HTML5 canvas element, but I am not sure to what extent these would be supported in IE6 using excanvas.js, and if they are supported, what type of performance I can expect. I have not actually found a working example that ran in IE6.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Check out the API gallery and gadget gallery for the Google Visualization API to get a feel for how well a variety of rich charts work in IE6.

Answer 2

Check out Highcharts.com, Flot.js, and InfoVis. I can't promise you they will work with IE6, but I feel your pain; my clients insist on IE6 also.

Answer 3

raphaeljs is a good alternative, it's a cross browser wrapper for HTML5 canvas element and works even in IE6

Answer 4

Remember IE has support for VML a rival to SVG, google use VML on maps when drawing road etc. I suspect they use xslt to translate their SVG output to VML.

http://www.lutanho.net/svgvml3d/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Markup_Language

But I would recommend that you have a good look for a good existing cross browser library, that Highcharts mentioned by upper stage looks amazing - if you can compete with that fine, go for it...

Answer 5

IE6 has VML support, VML is the almost equivalent of SVG Microsoft was pushing years ago.

Many frameworks today use VML to offer SVG and canvas functionalities.

Raphael, as already mentioned, is one.

Dojox.gfx (a dojo extension) is another one. It offers canvas-like functionality, and now has an SVG export function in place.

AmpleSDK is insanely awesome in enabling SVG (and more, even XUL) functionality everywhere feasible, even on IE5.5. (with some limitations)