New visualization options for faster rendering
Written by Jason on September 19, 2010You may have noticed that there are two versions of some chart types:
- Area vs. Area (Fast)
- Column vs. Column (Fast)
- Combo vs. Combo (Fast)
- Line vs. Line (Fast)
- Scatter vs. Scatter (Fast)
Just as their names would lead you to believe, the fast versions are FAST! They render dramatically faster than the other versions. If you are using any of the traditional types of charts with hundreds or thousands of data points, you should consider switching to the fast version.
We especially recommend you use these versions for embedding in a web page, as they can render over 100x faster. To put it into perspective, one large result set plotted using the traditional scatter chart took over two minutes to render for us. The new version took less than one second.
Most of the functionality of the traditional charts is available in the fast versions (and, in some instances, there's more!). Unfortunately, it's not quite all there, but we're almost there.
The biggest limitation of the fast charts (as of this writing) is if you want to download a high-res version of the chart to put in a presentation or other printed document. The traditional ones do a better job at this.
We'll keep both options available for now, but once the fast version supports all of the regular version's functionality, we'll migrate to it. If the fast version has all the features you need, we'd suggest you use it unless you prefer the look of the traditional chart.
