FlashCharts is a free, high quality framework for presenting interactive graphs on the web. The project was started by John Glazebrook http://teethgrinder.co.uk and is supported by a group of dedicated opensource developers. The team of FlashCharts has produced an extremely versatile and useful suite of interactive graphs. It all started when John needed interactive charts for a website:

Once upon a time I had to deal with a company who sell flash charting components, their component had a bug that I needed fixing, so I emailed them about it asking when it'd be fixed. (Remember that I had paid real money for this software.) They were so incompetent, rude and obnoxious that after three or four weeks of emails I thought to myself "I could learn Flash and Actionscript and write my own charting component, release it as Open Source, host it on sourceforge and build up a community of helpful coders faster than they can fix a single bug." And that is what I did. And that is why it is free. I guess the moral of the lesson is: don't piss off your customers.

John Glazebrook

Well, we are very pleased that the company disappointed him to such an extent that we now have FlashCharts. The framework could be a bit daunting to non-PhP enthusiasts when they want to use it on Joomla websites. This should not stop them (or you). Joachim Schmidt has developed a great plugin so everyone who can insert a plugin tag in an article can use FlashCharts on his/her Joomla site.

We tested the plugin documentation extensively and it is excellent. There are no typos in example tags, everything works directly out of the box and clear examples are provided that can be copied and pasted for instant gratification.

We are also impressed how fast the graphs load and that you can link them directly to Joomla databases. This is a great feature that enables you to do more with your databases.

We give this plugin and its developer 5 stars for building upon the powerful FlashCharts framework, acknowledging the exceptional work of the FlashChart developers, the first-rate documentation of the plugin and the ease of using the plugin.

Features include:

• The plugin is very easy to use
• You can embed one or more flashChart objects in one page (as we have done below)
  
• 11 different bar chart types (3d or 2d)
• 5 different line charts
• Pie chart
• 6 different animation types for charts (and no animation)
• 15 default attributes set by plugin Parameter
• All (24 are now supported) chart attributes can individually be set
• Data can be entered manually, or fed via file, via remote webserver or from Joomla!'s mysql database- this is especially remarkable (see as example the first graph that shows the most popular tutorials on on or website).
  
• German and Englisch language available

Below are a few examples of graphs, although the combinations are endless. We highly recommend that you check out the work of the developers.

Line Charts

Dotted Line Charts



Hollow Line Charts



Star Line Charts



Bow Line Charts



Bar Dome Charts



Bar Cylinder Charts



Bar Cylinder Outline Charts



Bar 3d Charts



Bar Glass Charts



Bar Round Charts

Bar Round 3d Charts

Bar Rounded Glass Charts

Bar Filled Charts

Bar Stack Charts

Bar Sketch Charts

Pie