Flashy Graphs Sans Flash

Looks pretty.

Graphing libraries are sort of a "the more the merrier" kind of thing, since which you pick depends on your aesthetic sensibility, a very long list of features that may or may not be implemented ("Can you do custom tooltips for individual points on the graph? Because I'd really like to do that. Oh, and I need Javascript callbacks to do data rescaling via AJAX."), whether the data abstractions meshes well with whatever you're using to generate the data, and what client side technology you favor.

To date I haven't been very impressed with the Javascript solutions I've used. My favorite for accessibility (and least favorite for implementation) is the Google Chart API: with a competent server-side library that blunts some of its numerous sharp edges, all your client needs to be able to do is load image URLs. I use this for pages I intend to be accessible from my cell phone and it works like a treat.

For generic charting, I seriously love OpenFlashChart 2. It has a modern aesthetic and I've yet to find a place where it couldn't be coerced into accommodating my needs.

Wow, I like this a lot! Damned shame that it doesn't appear to work in Chrome though, which means I'll continue with OpenFlashChart for the time being.

It has never ceased to amaze me quite how large an effect throwing a few pretty graphs in an application has on management. And one's salary for that matter ;)

RaphaelJS and gRaphael are probably some of the coolest javascript libraries I've used in quite a while. As the article says they're still very raw and quite undocumented, but the ease that it lets you do really advanced vector graphics and animation in javascript is truly amazing. Charts and graphs is just one the many potential uses this library has.