D3.js in Action + Ebook

Buyer beware: This book is for the previous version (3.x) of D3, D3v4 is significantly different.

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The book is in black and white. The images are not colored.it should have been mentioned before purchasing

This book clearly has the potential to be best in class. It is thorough and covers d3 from the simple to the advanced. The technical breadth is impressive.Of course, I only provided 3 stars because the writing - clarify and exposition - is baffling at many points in the book. And worse yet, the actual coded charts are simplistic with code that doesn't match the book. Here is one example of my frustration with the book:"“Most layouts, pie included, can define where the values are in your array by defining an accessor function to get to those values. In the case of nestedTweets, we define pieChart.value() to point at the numTweets attribute of the dataset it’s being used on.”The passage is not difficult and the actual code does contain the code pieChart.value(). However, in the same code, the following snippet is also used:el.numFavorites = d3.sum(el.values, function (d) {return d.favorites.length});el.numRetweets = d3.sum(el.values, function (d) {return d.retweets.length});Notice the el.values - the author fails to even address them as this method has never been used in the book previous to this point. Is it a typo? Who knows without breaking open a text editor, browser, debugging, etc.And the blow which plunged this book into the 3 star rating is in the first chapter, the author discusses the steam chart as a topic in a later chapter. In chapter 4, tells readers they're about the depart the staid visual charts which could be mistaken for Excel charts. He then discusses several different charts in trajectory toward the steam graph. Thee to four charts are demonstrated in the buildup and finally the author shows a very ugly steam graph that is not consistent with the data. Now - wait for it - instead of perfecting the steam graph, his exact words for abandoning the steam graph :** Beginning of steam graph section“In this and earlier chapters, we’ve dealt with rather staid examples of information visualization that we might easily create in any traditional spreadsheet. But you didn’t get into this business to make Excel charts. You want to wow your audience with beautiful data, win awards for your aesthetic je ne sais quoi, and evoke deep emotional responses with your representation of change over time. You want to make streamgraphs like the one in figure 4.21.”** End of steam graph section“The streamgraph in figure 4.25 has some obvious issues, but we’re not going to correct them. ” .... “Is this [ a steam graph ] really a better way to show movie grosses than a simpler stacked graph or line chart? .... “If you’re trying to impress an audience with a complex-looking chart, it would also be useful. Otherwise, you’ll be better off with something simpler than this. ”This book is a disappointment as it fails to deliver what it promises and made too many shortcuts. Buy the book at half priced as it is a decent resource if a reader is willing to pay the price but don't reward the publisher full price as this book needs another draft and edit.

Elijah Meeks’ D3.js in Action (D3iA) reflects how amazingly feature-rich D3 is; in some senses, it’s like trying to take a drink from a fire hose. There’s a lot to D3.js and this book covers it! Not to worry, though; Elijah guides you through D3’s many features with extensive, well-documented examples.I have done some charting in my career but D3iA opened my eyes to the expansive world of data/information visualization. Yes, D3iA covers the basics (things I already knew about) like line, bar, stacked bar, pie charts and histograms and some variations of the basics (e.g., donut/ring charts and exploded pie charts). But I also learned about more advanced charting techniques like pack and tree (dendograms) layouts for representing hierarchical data, streamgraphs, Sankey diagrams, creating Word clouds, network diagrams (force-directed layouts, adjacency matrices and arc diagrams).As software engineers, D3iA guides us to the best methods we should employ to represent the types of data we’re working with (just because you can represent data in a certain way, doesn’t mean that you should do it that way).The book devotes an entire chapter to geospatial information visualization; not only can you implement your standard mapping; you can also plot information on those maps (à la push pins on the maps of yesteryear).D3iA also discusses using HTML5’s canvas in collaboration with SVG.Now that I have done the 30,000 foot “flyover”, I plan to go through the book a second time and dive more deeply into each of the examples. There’s a lot to digest!Interspersed throughout, as well as at the very end of, the print book (there is a bonus chapter on the web about data/informationvisualization on mobile devices), Elijah gives excellent resources (books as well as URLs) where you can learn more about data/information visualization in general as well as examples of cool things you can do with D3.js itself. I would like to explore these in more depth as well.As I mentioned before, there is a bonus chapter on the web about data/information visualization on mobile devices. Elijah goes into detail not only about UI (User Interface) issues when transitioning from desktop to mobile but also about but UX (User Experience) issues as well including various touch gestures like one-finger panning, pinch to zoom and three-finger rotating. I especially appreciated his recommendation to visualize relations between touch events using SVG lines. He also covered responsive web design which is critical when dealing with screen sizes for various mobile devices (e.g., tablets vs. smart phones).One enhancement I would suggest is to have a glossary of the various terms that were introduced in the book. This can easily be rectified in the next edition of the book (hint, hint).I recommend D3.js in Action; if you’re a beginner, though, take it slowly so you can sip from the firehose and savor the beauty (bouquet?) of D3!Art Bergquist

I have recently purchased and received this book. Although I have not yet had a chance to read a very significant portion of the book, I should point out that I am a professional software developer with over thirty years experience in the industry, if only very limited background in front-end technologies.I was hoping to address that deficiency, at least in some measure, with "D3.js in Action". But frankly, I am frustrated by Meeks' book.There is no question that the author has a great deal of expertise in the subject, and that the book contains a wealth of useful information for qualified readers. HOWEVER, I find that the presentation lacks logical order, at least that kind of order that I am accustomed to finding in programming texts that purport to teach their subject "from the ground up".In my three decades in this business, I have read far, far more of those kinds of books than I can recall, and some of them are worth their weight in titanium, if not gold. But this one leaves me scratching my head on at least every other page, as I try to build a "map" of the subject in my head, but am left struggling, time after time, to get a grasp on the subject in a structured way, but I keep failing.I would certainly not recommend purchasing this book as your first exposure to D3.js.

Had hoped for more instruction on data handling in D3 - connecting to multiple types of data stores (JSON, CVS, real time feeds, etc) and more sources of data. It is well suited for learning D3 structure and features.

The book is nice for what it delivers about D3: how the library is designed, how you can work with it, some examples... For beginners I think.I recommend in addition to this book, a more general content about visual communication (like "Show me the numbers" of Stephen Few for instance) because there is no magic in D3, it is a powerful framework when you know what to do.