Creating Animated Bubble Charts using D3 in pure JavaScript.
This repository contains code to create your own animated bubble chart. It is a functional remake of my previous bubble chart code, only now there is no CoffeeScript. Everything is written in plain old JavaScript. There isn't even a build step!
It goes along with a remake of the tutorial here:
A live version of this code is here:
http://vallandingham.me/bubble_chart/
D3 needs to be run from a webserver due to how it imports data files.
See more here: https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki#using
So, to run this visualization locally, from the Terminal, navigate to the directory you checked it out to
cd ~/code/path/to/bubble_chart
Then start a webserver locally. If you are on a Linux or Mac, you should be able to use python's built in webserver:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 3000
Alternatively, I have switched to using node's http-server for local hosting.
Ensure you have the node package installed:
npm install -g http-server
And then run it in the root directory of the repository.
http-server
Bubbles might not be the answer to your problems
While the bubbles are flashy and are fun to watch move around, they may not be the best visual form to display your information in. In most cases, when bubbles are used to encode a single variable, the two dimensional bubble inflates and obscures the one dimensional value it is attempting to display.
Kaiser Fung hates bubble charts. You can see lots of reasons why here: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/bubble_chart/
Just keep in mind when you are working with your data: Bubbles aren't always the answer.