1000 points in 500 pixels? The question of plotting a line graph with thousands of data points came up again today. This always puzzled me; if your chart is only 500 pixels wide, why would you try to draw a chart with 1000 points? It would leave only half a pixel for each point. Flash is kewl but it won't render half pixels and even if it did, rendering 1000 lines in Flash is a little slow.
The quick option we discovered was to skip data points. For most data you can skip anywhere from 2 to 10 points and the chart won't change. Skipping points not only speeds up rendering but it can also result in a cleaner chart.
Written by "Sam".
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Chris, Los Angeles' CSS & ActionScript guru, successfully cannonballed into web development in the late 90's. Always caught up with the latest in Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and XML, Chris authored premium articles for the largest Dreamweaver/Flash community (www.DMXzone.com) and produced WebDevDesign (iTunes featured), a popular Web Design & Development Podcast. Somewhere, Chris finds time to run an authorized Adobe user group focused around open source and Adobe technologies. Being a big community leader, Chris Charlton remains a resident faculty member of the Rich Media Insitute and lends himself to speak at large industry events, like JobStock, NAB, and FITC Hollywood.
