Sanket Nadhani - FusionCharts Beginner’s Guide: The Official Guide for FusionCharts Suite

Sanket Nadhani previously headed Marketing and Sales at FusionCharts, fresh out of college. As part of the role, he had to conceptualize different dashboards and demos and was often frustrated with the lack of practical resources on data visualization to learn from. Once he learned them after his daily bouts with tons of data, he started writing about the usability and best practices on the FusionCharts blog that have been well received.

He loves food, beer, and travelling. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sanketnadhani.

I want to thank the wonderful web community for sharing all their learning and experiences so selflessly. A lot of what I know and do today is because of you guys.

Shamasis Bhattacharya has been a part of FusionCharts since 2008. As a JavaScript architect, he heads the JavaScript development team and spends most of his time analyzing, modeling, and coding the FusionCharts JavaScript charting library with attention to smart software design and innovative data visualization countenances.

He writes on his blog http://www.shamasis.net/ and spends the rest of his time with his wife, Madhumita.

My part in this book wouldn't have been worth reading had my wife not been around helping me and had not Pallav e-mailed me questioning whether I had been smoking while writing the draft!

Pallav Nadhani is the co-founder and CEO of FusionCharts, and an angel investor. He started FusionCharts at the age of 17 as a way to make pocket money. Today, FusionCharts has around 20,000 customers and 400,000 users in over 110 countries. His entrepreneurial journey has been covered by various magazines such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Today, Economic Times, and numerous blogs and websites. He holds a Masters in Computer Science from The University of Edinburgh and loves traveling, beer, and poker.

He has also worked on the book "Flash.NET", Friends of Ed Publication .

I want to dedicate this book to Mom, who has always been my inspiration, and Puja, who has been my cheerful support throughout. I would also like to thank the entire FusionCharts team for taking FusionCharts to where it is today, and Hrishikesh for helping me with this book.

Karoline Osaland Klever works as a Senior Developer and Consultant at Epinova, focusing on web development with EPiServer and integrations with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. She was honored as one of the top three computer science students in Norway the year she graduated from the university and has, since then, released an open source framework for integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. She lives in Oslo, Norway.

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Preface

As web developers, we build applications that feed on data. We parse it, process it, and report it. Our reports take the form of tables, grids, and diagrams such as charts, gauges, and maps. Parsing and processing are backend tasks that are invisible to the user. The actual reporting of data, however, is a bulk of an experience a user has with our application.

This book is a practical step-by-step guide to using FusionCharts Suite to create delightful web reports and dashboards. After creating your first chart in 15 minutes, you will learn advanced reporting capabilities such as drill-down and JavaScript integration. Finally, you round up the experience by learning reporting best practices including the right chart type selection and practical usability tips to become the data visualization guru among your peers.

What this book covers

, Introducing FusionCharts , introduces you to FusionCharts Suite and teaches you how to build your first chart in under 15 minutes. You will learn the XML and JSON data formats that FusionCharts Suite supports, and apply it to build different types of charts.

, Customizing your Chart , brings to you the wide spectrum of customization options you have with FusionCharts Suite, both aesthetically and functionally. You will learn how to customize the chart background and font, control how numbers appear on the chart, and add more context to charts using trendlines.