SVG, Canvas, WebGL? Visualization Options for the Web

During my last endeavour I had to make high-frequency (1kHz+) plot on the web. Tried literally everything. Only tech that stood out was (webGL + websockets), amazingly working with firefox (but not chrome). So the perf conclusions of the article stands.

I liked the discussion on absurdity of having thousands of nodes displayed at once. Having few dozen nodes shown on screen actually communicates more information to user. Their recommendation is to avoid huge graphs and instead show statistics about graph (number of nodes, most connected node, longest chain...), or to filter down the graph using domain specific knowledge. Great advice that shouldn't be buried in benchmark of web technologies (which was quite interesting read as well).

I've always admired yWorks products. I only wish they would turn yEd into commercial product and give it more love, even though it's already best in class. I introduced yEd to all companies I worked at and saw quick adoption among colleagues. I've come to consider it as versatile tool for exploring idea space, communicating architecture and structure to others, as well as for producing flashy marketing diagrams.

As cool as Canvas and WebGL are, they also enable privacy violations, allowing web browsers to be uniquely fingerprinted.

I am not saying people shouldn’t use them, but just be aware that when you do, you are making some of the web less accessible to people attempting to preserve privacy.

To be fair, similar arguments can be made of JavaScript, which I use all the time.