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C3.js

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+ 1
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D3.js

1.9K
1.7K
+ 1
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Plotly.js

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C3.js vs D3.js vs Plotly: What are the differences?

C3.js, D3.js, and Plotly are popular JavaScript libraries used for data visualization on websites. Below are the key differences between these libraries:

1. **Learning Curve**: D3.js is considered to have a steep learning curve due to its low-level API that requires deep understanding of SVG, CSS, and JavaScript. C3.js, on the other hand, provides a higher-level API that simplifies the process of creating charts, making it easier for beginners. Plotly focuses on offering an intuitive interface and comprehensive documentation, making it user-friendly for users of all levels.

2. **Customization**: D3.js allows deep customization of every aspect of a chart, giving developers complete control over the visualizations. C3.js offers a simpler interface with predefined chart types and styles, limiting customization to some extent. Plotly provides a balance between customization and ease of use by offering various customization options through its interface.

3. **Interactivity**: D3.js provides extensive support for adding interactive elements to charts, allowing users to interact with data points and visuals in real-time. C3.js includes basic interactive features by default, such as tooltips and zooming, making it suitable for simple interactions. Plotly shines in interactivity by offering a wide range of interactive features and widgets for enhancing user engagement and data exploration.

4. **Community and Support**: D3.js has a large and active community that contributes to tutorials, examples, and plugins, providing comprehensive support for developers. C3.js has a growing community but may have fewer resources compared to D3.js. Plotly, being a commercial product, offers dedicated customer support and documentation, making it a reliable choice for businesses and professionals.

5. **Rendering Performance**: D3.js excels in rendering performance, as it directly manipulates the DOM for efficient updates and transitions, suitable for handling large datasets. C3.js abstracts the rendering process, which may have overhead compared to D3.js when dealing with complex visualizations. Plotly's rendering performance is optimized for web and mobile platforms, ensuring smooth user experience across devices.

6. **Integration and Compatibility**: D3.js can be seamlessly integrated with other JavaScript frameworks and libraries due to its flexibility, making it a preferred choice for developers working on complex web applications. C3.js is built on top of D3.js and provides easier integration with existing web projects that have less customization requirements. Plotly offers APIs for integrating its visualizations with various platforms, making it versatile for different development environments.

In Summary, the key differences between C3.js, D3.js, and Plotly lie in their learning curve, customization options, interactivity features, community support, rendering performance, and integration capabilities.

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Pros of C3.js
Pros of D3.js
Pros of Plotly.js
  • 2
    Easy to use
  • 2
    Reusable charts
  • 195
    Beautiful visualizations
  • 103
    Svg
  • 92
    Data-driven
  • 81
    Large set of examples
  • 61
    Data-driven documents
  • 24
    Visualization components
  • 20
    Transitions
  • 18
    Dynamic properties
  • 16
    Plugins
  • 11
    Transformation
  • 7
    Makes data interactive
  • 4
    Open Source
  • 4
    Enter and Exit
  • 4
    Components
  • 3
    Exhaustive
  • 3
    Backed by the new york times
  • 2
    Easy and beautiful
  • 1
    Highly customizable
  • 1
    Awesome Community Support
  • 1
    Simple elegance
  • 1
    Templates, force template
  • 1
    Angular 4
  • 16
    Bindings to popular languages like Python, Node, R, etc
  • 10
    Integrated zoom and filter-out tools in charts and maps
  • 9
    Great support for complex and multiple axes
  • 8
    Powerful out-of-the-box featureset
  • 6
    Beautiful visualizations
  • 4
    Active user base
  • 4
    Impressive support for webgl 3D charts
  • 3
    Charts are easy to share with a cloud account
  • 3
    Webgl chart types are extremely performant
  • 2
    Interactive charts
  • 2
    Easy to use online editor for creating plotly.js charts
  • 2
    Publication quality image export

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Cons of C3.js
Cons of D3.js
Cons of Plotly.js
  • 1
    Dependent on D3.js which is not lightweight
  • 11
    Beginners cant understand at all
  • 6
    Complex syntax
  • 18
    Terrible document

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What is C3.js?

c3 is a D3-based reusable chart library that enables deeper integration of charts into web applications.

What is D3.js?

It is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. Emphasises on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework.

What is Plotly.js?

It is a standalone Javascript data visualization library, and it also powers the Python and R modules named plotly in those respective ecosystems (referred to as Plotly.py and Plotly.R). It can be used to produce dozens of chart types and visualizations, including statistical charts, 3D graphs, scientific charts, SVG and tile maps, financial charts and more.

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Blog Posts

Sep 8 2017 at 2:54PM

Eventbrite-0

JavaScriptNode.jsReact+7
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What are some alternatives to C3.js, D3.js, and Plotly.js?
Highcharts
Highcharts currently supports line, spline, area, areaspline, column, bar, pie, scatter, angular gauges, arearange, areasplinerange, columnrange, bubble, box plot, error bars, funnel, waterfall and polar chart types.
NVD3
This project is an attempt to build re-usable charts and chart components for d3.js without taking away the power that d3.js gives you. This is a very young collection of components, with the goal of keeping these components very customizable, staying away from your standard cookie cutter solutions.
jQuery
jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.
React
Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.
AngularJS
AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.
See all alternatives