Flare: Data Visualization for the Web

Posted on 11/15/09 by David Sharek 1 Comment

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.

Flare is open-source software released under a BSD license, meaning it can be freely deployed and modified (and even sold for $$). Flare’s design was adapted from its predecessor prefuse, a visualization toolkit for Java.

You can download Flare for free  from their Website. There’s also great examples of the visualizer in use. A tutorial and an API document is also available for help getting started.

I plan to use Flare to create a user-interface for a concept map of Human Factors Methods and Measurements. The data will come from a fuzzy-connection correlation table that some friends are designing.