Today I ran across Flare, which is a data visualization tool for the web that utilizes Adobe Flash. Flare can do animations, tree graphs, bubble maps, stacked time series, scatter plots, bar graphs, and more. For example, the image to the right visualizes the changing labor force in the United States over the past 150 years by using a stacked time series. Of particular interest is Flare’s demo page, where you can see all the different features in action. From their web site:
Flare is an ActionScript library for creating visualizations that run in the Adobe Flash Player. From basic charts and graphs to complex interactive graphics, the toolkit supports data management, visual encoding, animation, and interaction techniques. Even better, flare features a modular design that lets developers create customized visualization techniques without having to reinvent the wheel.
I also recommend a new article “Using Flare Visualization with Flex” which provides an detailed developer overview, a video of a real-world solution, power tips, and sample code.