D3.js in Action 1st Edition
Author: Visit ‘s Elijah Meeks Page ID: 1617292117
About the Author
Elijah Meeks is a software developer and researcher at Stanford University. His D3.js portfolio includes work with ORBIS and Kindred Britain.
Paperback: 352 pagesPublisher: Manning Publications; 1 edition (March 15, 2015)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 1617292117ISBN-13: 978-1617292118 Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.7 inches Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Best Sellers Rank: #128,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #28 in Books > Computers & Technology > Web Development & Design > User Generated Content #32 in Books > Textbooks > Computer Science > Algorithms #40 in Books > Computers & Technology > Digital Audio, Video & Photography > Video Production
The D3.js library is very powerful and full of useful choices and possibilities. But, you should not try to tackle Elijah Meeks’s new book if you are a newcomer who has not yet gotten fairly comfortable with JavaScript, HTML, CSS and JSON. It also helps to understand how CSVs (Comma Separated Values) can be used. And you should know how to set up and run a local web server on your computer. However, prior knowledge of D3.js and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is not necessary.
Some reviewers have remarked on the amount of how-to and technical information packed into D3.js in Action. It is indeed impressive. And, yes, it really can seem like the concepts, details and examples are being squirted at you from a fire hose, particularly if you are attempting to race through the text. As Elijah Meeks has pointed out: "[T]he focus of this book is on a more exhaustive explanation of key principles of the library."
So plan to take your time. Tackle D3.js in small bites, using the d3js.org website, this text and other sources. I am pretty new to learning data visualization, and I definitely had never heard of visualizations such as Voronoi diagrams, nor tools such as TopoJSON, until I started working my way through this book. And those are just a few of the available possibilities.
Like most of the other reviewers, I have not yet tried all of the code examples. But the ones I have tested have worked very well, and they have gotten me thinking about how I can adapt them to use in some of my work. I am a bit disappointed that the book takes 40 pages to get to the requisite "Hello, world" examples. And once you arrive, the explanations likely will seem a bit murky and incomplete to some readers.
However, that is a minor complaint. D3.
Elijah Meeks’ D3.js in Action (D3iA) reflects how amazingly feature-rich D3 is; in some senses, it’s like trying to take a drink from a fire hose. There’s a lot to D3.js and this book covers it! Not to worry, though; Elijah guides you through D3’s many features with extensive, well-documented examples.
I have done some charting in my career but D3iA opened my eyes to the expansive world of data/information visualization. Yes, D3iA covers the basics (things I already knew about) like line, bar, stacked bar, pie charts and histograms and some variations of the basics (e.g., donut/ring charts and exploded pie charts). But I also learned about more advanced charting techniques like pack and tree (dendograms) layouts for representing hierarchical data, streamgraphs, Sankey diagrams, creating Word clouds, network diagrams (force-directed layouts, adjacency matrices and arc diagrams).
As software engineers, D3iA guides us to the best methods we should employ to represent the types of data we’re working with (just because you can represent data in a certain way, doesn’t mean that you should do it that way).
The book devotes an entire chapter to geospatial information visualization; not only can you implement your standard mapping; you can also plot information on those maps (à la push pins on the maps of yesteryear).
D3iA also discusses using HTML5’s canvas in collaboration with SVG.
Now that I have done the 30,000 foot “flyover”, I plan to go through the book a second time and dive more deeply into each of the examples. There’s a lot to digest!
D3 js in Action book by Elijah Meeks 1 available D3 js in Action has 1 available editions to buy at Alibris First Edition Fair or Better Alternative Editions 2015 1st Edition 9781617292118 D3 js in Action AbeBooks Meeks D3 js in Action introduces you to the most powerful web data visualization library available and shows you how to use it to New 2015 1st Edition Paperback
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