It's been a while since we've posted on the blog so I thought
I'd update you all on what we've got cooking. Ironically, the lack
of posts on the blog is actually a reflection on how busy we've
been, not how little is going on. So much to do, so little
time...
Visiblox Charts 3.0
Yes, we've been busy cooking up a new Visiblox Charts release
and it's starting to take shape very nicely. We're hoping to get it
into your hands in August sometime, all things going well.
This release will contain some nice new features and
enhancements so I'll take a moment to highlight some big ones.
Per-Point Styling
One of the most requested features in Visiblox Charts has been
the ability to apply different styling to specific points on a
chart. Some people want to turn columns red on a column chart
if they go over a certain threshold, or have their candlesticks
turn a different colour on consecutive falls in share price.
Up until now this has either not been possible or has
required a lot of work using the TemplatedSeries which in turn has
a negative impact on performance with lots of data. Well, no
more. We've now added the ability to style individual points
of a chart to allow some of the above scenarios.
New Behaviour API
One of the most exciting features is our new Behaviour API.
If you're using Visiblox Charts, you're almost certainly
using some of our behaviours, be it zooming and panning or rulers
or trackballs. Well with the new behaviour API, you now get a
lot more power and flexibility in how to use and combine those
behaviours. We've included support for:
- Axis behaviours so that behaviours respond to pointer events on
axes
- Keyboard modifiers (e.g. zoom when ctrl is pressed and pan when
shift is pressed)
- Right mouse button support (and in fact middle mouse, X1 and X2
button support)
- Gesture support for touch devices
- We've also taken the opportunity to make our WP7 and desktop
APIs consistent in this area
Performance
As always we've got our eye on the performance side of the
charts. The Ultimate Edition raster series have had many
improvements applied and now scale to even greater levels -
supporting a million points out of the box - no filtering required.
But if you want filtering - it's still there. We've
also taken a sledge hammer to memory usage and really filed that
down to the bare bones. It's not just raster series that has
seen improvements though, other areas of the charts are faster
too!
Donut Charts
Yep, donut (or ring) charts are coming to Visiblox. Check
it out!
Heat Plots
Some customers have been asking for heat plots which use colour
to show a 3D data model in two dimensions. We've been working
hard on implementing this functionality for Visiblox Charts and are
planning to include this in Visiblox Charts 3.0 as part of the
Ultimate Edition. This includes being able to render such
data in a 2D map as well as various interpolation algorithms for
extrapolating data from your sparsely populated data model into a
full 2D rendering.
Miscellaneous
As usual we've made a number of minor API improvements, resolved
plenty of minor issues and cleaned up the documentation some
more.
Customer Support
One of the big things people always tell us about Visiblox
Charts is that the quality of our support offering is next to none.
We're absolutely delighted to hear that feedback and think
it's fantastic that we're meeting and exceeding expectations.
That's something we plan to continue to do and we're
continuing to develop our offering in this area. In
particular we are planning to launch our customer portal in the
near future. This will allow users who purchase the support
option to log in to raise and review tickets, access new versions
and view our knowledge base of FAQ items. Watch this space
for more news on that!
New Website
As you will probably have seen, earlier this year we launched
our new website. We're quite pleased with the results, but if
you have suggestions, do let us know.
Well that's what we've been up to for the last little while.
As the release date for 3.0 approaches we will increasingly
be looking at what to do in 3.1 so if you have any thoughts and
ideas, we'd love to
hear them. Current thinking is that contour plots are going to
make the cut. Anything else you'd like to see?
Thanks for stopping by!
J.
