A good chart can tell a story, such as depicting when you get home on Saturday night by plotting your
.
A good chart can take an elusive concept and clarify it in a visually appealing manner.
This ingenious XKCD strip uses a pie chart, a bar chart and a recursive scatter plot, to demonstrate the concept of
self description.
Whether you need a simple line chart, an
interactive Geo Map or a complex
Motion Chart , Google can help you add live charts to your web page using our
Chart and
Visualization APIs. Both of these APIs are free and simple to use, however they each have distinct advantages:
1. The Chart API provides
Image Charts which are rendered by a Google chart server in response to a simple URL request. Image Charts are fast to render and can be easily emailed and printed. In addition to the extensive
gallery of charts, this server now also provides
dynamic icons,
QR codes, and
math formulas.
2. The Visualization API provides
Interactive charts which are rendered on the browser using a Google developed JavaScript library. Interactive charts trigger events, providing tool-tips and animations. In addition to a
rich gallery of charts, this tool can also read live data from a variety of data sources such as Oracle PL/SQL or Google spreadsheets.
We have discovered that developers occasionally need some help in navigating between the many options and distinct advantages of Image Charts and Interactive Charts, and therefore decided to bring the two APIs under one new framework which we call the
"Google Chart Tools". We've accordingly renamed the APIs to
Image Charts API and
Interactive Charts API and created a simple
side-by-side comparison page which you might find useful in choosing which chart tool is better for you.
Image Chart: Oceans of the world
Interactive Chart: Oceans of the world
By Michael Fink, Google Chart Tools team