Sam Hunter - NRS
A bit of background information to raise awareness and share our learning from using Highcharts in publications.
What is it?
Why use it?
Where has it been used?
What have we learned?
What are we working on?
What is it?
Highcharts is a software library for data visualisation, written in pure JavaScript.
It is free for personal/non-commercial uses and paid for commercial applications.
The Scottish Government and NRS have licenses for publications.
Why use it to make charts with?
Meant for HTML. To be viewed in a browser.
Lightweight. Charts are rendered in the page by the browser as vector graphics.
Interactive/ reactive. Charts change based on user interaction.
Accessibility. Works with screen readers, charts can be sonified for visually impaired.
Customisation. Fine control over features; Colours, Fonts, Patterns, Download images/ data.
But this is the R User Day… Why are you telling me about JS?
Works great embedded in HTML from R markdown and R Shiny.
The R package highcharter enables building charts entirely in R.
We don’t need to know any JS to go from data to visualisation and still get all the benefits.
Well if it’s so good, where have highcharts been used in publications?
Similar syntax to ggplot.
Good documentation, resources and demos.
A little JavaScript goes a long way.
Great with RAPs for reports and publications.
Requires some geography files in geojson format
Horizontal axis is positive in both directions.
What other Highcharts features are we learning to use?
Sonification doesn’t work inside this slideshow but does in standalone HTML knitted from R markdown.
Powerful for web based content.
Interactive by default.
Easy to get started.
Accessibility features.
Charts resize well.
Looks professional.
Paid license for publishing.
JavaScript.
Endless options.
Adding sonification isn’t straightforward.
Hard to master.
builds off ggplot, easy to add on to existing code. FREE!
Not so flexible, ggigraph isn’t popular, small feature set for interactivity.
Start with the…
Good documentation, resources and demos.
Further reading in the R Users’ sharepoint docs
Join the RAP Yammer group
Request to join the Teams “Highcharter Users Group - Org - NRS” here.