KavaChart in Action - Examples and Documentation - AlaCarte
[ Back ] Timeseries Applet Collection - Date Bar Charts
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Bar charts are ideal for comparing categories or discrete events against a common
scale. In KavaChart, bar charts with vertical bars are called "column" charts,
while those with horizontal bars are called "bar" charts.
Bar charts are particularly good at highlighting the differences between items. In general, the bar and column charts available in the KavaChart AlaCarte Basic applet collection do a better job than timeseries bar charts. If you need to show trends, a line chart or area chart variant might be a better choice. KavaChart AlaCarte's Timeseries collection includes the following bar and column charts:
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Use the source code to this page as a guide in creating your own bar charts.
You can also use the KavaChart
ChartWizard
to design your own bar charts.
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Even though bar charts are best for comparing discrete items, it's possible to use them in a similar fashion to line and area charts for viewing trends. In particular, the bar and column applets that begin with "date" (dateBarApp, dateStackColumnApp, etc.) will arrange bars along a time oriented axis. In this case, we also adjusted the "barClusterWidth" parameter to make adjacent bars touch. The effect is similar to a step chart. Time oriented bar charts should only be used when you have more than 20 observations. Fewer observations are better compared as discrete items. |
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In KavaChart parlance, a "Bar Chart" has horizontal bars, while a "Column Chart" has vertical bars. |
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Generally a basic bar chart works better for time series than a dateColumn chart. However, when you need to have a real time scale with bars, you should consider using stickApp. This applet has variable width bars (default is a 1 pixel stick), but it also doesn't have to accommodate the stacking or clustering behavior of other bar charts, so it works better than a bar chart in most cases. |
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