More charting tools from GlobFX

Last issue we were on the subject of charting for Web applications and here’s a couple more products you might want to take a look at … both products are from GlobFX Technologies (see links below).

The first product is Swiff Chart, a tool that creates animated charts in Macromedia Flash format. To create a chart you paste data from a spreadsheet or import it from a formatted text file, select a chart style (there are eight predefined types and scores of color and layout combinations), set the various parameters and finally export the chart as a Macromedia Flash movie.

If you opt for the professional edition you can import data from a Microsoft Excel worksheet and also export the final animated chart into a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

The professional edition also includes exporting to Adobe PDF, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and SVGZ (Compressed Scalable Vector Graphics) as well as the Macromedia Flash format. You can also add annotations to charts that can be set up as interactive labels (activated on mouse roll over).

The charts produced by Swiff Chart are great looking and the animation options are a lot like those offered in PowerPoint, which makes Swiff Chart very easy to use.

The other charting tool from GlobFX is Swiff Chart Generator, a server-side utility that creates dynamic animated charts for Active Server Pages, PHP scripts and JSP scripts.

Swiff Chart Generator allows you to extract chart data from a database, URLs, delimited text files, as well as in-line strings and arrays. The tool then applies a style template created with the Swiff Chart authoring tool and Chart Generator outputs charts in Macromedia Flash, PNG/JPG, SVG or PDF formats.

Pricing for Swiff Chart 3.1 Standard Edition is $149 while the Professional Edition is $299. Swiff Chart 3 Professional Edition single server licenses are $899 for Windows and Linux, and $1,799 for Solaris. Thirty-day demo versions that overlay the output with a watermark are available.