The cookbook that you are reading will show you how to draw a myriad of graphs in ActionScript. ActionScript is one of the easiest ways to represent graphical information to users across browsers and platforms. It allows you to add a wide range of dynamic effects and interactions to your graphs and charts.
We'll start from the humble beginnings, explaining a little about the ActionScript display list and end at full-blown interactive 3D graphs. In between, you will get to see what goes into animating graphs, adding interaction, and much, much more.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Graph Drawing, goes over the basics of drawing in ActionScript. We cover everything needed to draw graphs, such as the display list and transformations.
Chapter 2, Working with Data, will explain how you can import data into your ActionScript program. There are many types of graphs, but all of them are based on data.
Chapter 3, Creating Bar Charts, gives us all the tools to create multiple bar charts. Be it vertical, horizontal, comparison, or histograms, this chapter will provide solid bases to improve those charts even more.
Chapter 4, Drawing Different Types of Graphs, will go through an array of different charts, each presented in different recipes, some common such as the Venn diagram, some less common such as the Treemap.
Chapter 5, Adding Interaction, covers how you can give the user various options to interact with the graph. Selecting, zooming, and panning will be explained as well as a few other options.
Chapter 6, Mapping Geographical and Spatial Data, will show how to bring data and maps together to derive further meaning. We will start with simple recipes just showing a map and points of interest and ending up generating heat maps.
Chapter 7, Animating a Graph, explores how to animate graphs using different techniques and animation libraries.
Chapter 8, Creating a Relational Network, shows how to create a relational network, a data visualization that is used to represent a tree data structure, from scratch.
Chapter 9, Creating Three-Dimensional Graphs, lays the groundwork for drawing 3D graphs. Although this is not for the faint of heart, 3D graphs can add a tremendous "wow" factor to your application. This is the first chapter on 3D that gives a high-level overview of everything involved in drawing in 3D, and shows how you can draw some basic graphs.
Chapter 10, Working with Various 3D Graph Types, goes all out on 3D. We'll show you why 3D can add real value to your graphs by applying data to models of real life objects.