amCharts & amMap blog

A new version of ASP.NET Controls for amCharts has been released. This version adds support for Scatter (XY) & Bubble Charts and includes several updates and bugfixes.

Here’s a list of chagnes:

- added support for scatter/bubble charts
- BUGFIX: font sizes were not properly converted to pixels from FontUnit and having no effect on the output
- BUGFIX: ColumnChart, LineChart: plot area margins weren’t working (were rendered in the wrong place in xml)
- BUGFIX: default decimal separator is "," not "."
- BUGFIX: LineChart: URL data field wasn’t properly rendered to XML

Download ASP.NET controls for amCharts

A lot of amCharts and amMap users asked me whether it is possible to export charts and maps in any vector format so that they could use them for high resolution prints. Recently I made some digging and found that yes, it is possible!

This method requires some additional software to be installed on your computer, so you can’t make this available for everybody; however, I guess, that in most cases there will be a limited number of people in your company who will be using this function.

Using this method you will be able to save charts as vector PDF, EPS or PS files but also as bitmaps – PNG, JPG, BMP, PCX and TIFF. And this will not require web server and will be done much faster when using default amCharts’ “export as image” feature. So I would recommend use “export as image” function only if you need this feature to be public.

Here is a tutorial about exporting flash charts to PDF and other formats.

Since v 1.4.0 of all charts you can have labels in data file (only if you are using XML data format). This is useful if you have multiple charts with the same settings and only labels are different.

Adding data labels to data XML is easy - the syntax of XML is exactly the same as it is in settings file. Here is an example:

<chart>
    <series>
        <value xid="0">Xbox 360</value>
        <value xid="1">PlayStation 3</value>
        <value xid="2">Wii</value>
    </series>
    <graphs>
        <graph gid="0" color="#9FCD95" gradient_fill_colors="#FFFFFF, #9FCD95">
            <value xid="0" description="Click for more info about Xbox 360" url="http://www.xbox360.com">399</value>
            <value xid="1" description="Click for more info about PlayStation 3" url="http://www.playstation.com">599</value>
            <value xid="2" description="Click for more info about Wii" url="http://www.wii.com">249</value>
        </graph>
    </graphs>

  <labels>
    <label>
      <x>0</x>
      <y>20</y>
      <rotate></rotate>
      <width></width>
      <align>center</align>
      <text_color></text_color>
      <text_size></text_size>
      <text>
        <![CDATA[<b>Prices of Game Consoles</b>]]>
      </text>
    </label>
  </labels>
</chart>

Another new thing which is added in v 1.4.0 is a possibility to sort legend entries in reverse order. This is done by setting:

<legend>
   <reverse_order>true</reverse_order>

Download amCharts

I receive some nice feedback from amCharts and amMap users time to time, however don’t have a "Testimonials" page. But I can’t not share this one:

Wow! I must say that your products are amazing!

With just a little bit of time on Google I found your amMap. Of course,  when I first saw it, I thought "Cool! But we can’t use it." Because I needed a custom map of Missouri, I didn’t think your product was viable. But, I kept coming back to it - it just wouldn’t leave me alone! It was way too cool! Well, the more I evaluated, the more viable it became. And the documentation about creating customized maps sent it over the top. Nothing else - and I do mean NOTHING - that I had reviewed came anywhere close. It was very intuitive and easy to use. Well, in a very short time, I was able to complete the project. It debuted on "Super Tuesday" (Feb 5, 2008) at http://www.sos.mo.gov/enrmaps/.

The basis of the project was to provide a series of maps/charts that showed who was leading the 2008 presidential preference primary in Missouri based on party and which counties had completed their vote totals. With the live data we already collected with an older application, watching the maps and charts change dynamically was really exciting! We usually get quite a bit of traffic anyway, but it increased  with the interactive maps! We were mentioned by Karl Rove on the national Fox News broadcast and have been receiving many comments since  about how fantastic the pages were and how did we do it.

Of course, I owe it all to you! I’m debating on whether to continue being selfish and hording you as my secret weapon, or being nice and sharing the info. Of course, in the end I’ll have to share, but I wanted  to first contact you.  Again, thanks for such wonderful products! Keep up the excellent work!

Erica Gage
Missouri Secretary of State
http://www.sos.mo.gov

If you’d like to leave some feedback on amCharts & amMap, you can post comments here, from now on this will be a testimonials page. Thank you!

We have just released a new version of "ASP.NET controls for amCharts". This version adds support for Line & Area charts. Other changes in this release:

• FEATURE ADDED: no flash player message is now customizable
• BUGFIX: export as image script url wasn’t properly resolved
• BUGFIX: ColumnChart: chart type wasn’t rendered to XML settings and it wasn’t possible to display bar charts

We are happy to announce that support for Column & Bar charts was added to "ASP.NET Controls for amCharts". New version 1.0.0 Beta 2 with ColumnChart control is available for immediate download at the download page.

Since v 1.3.6 Column & Bar chart can display bullets (images) above the columns (or next to bars). Here is an example:

http://www.amcharts.com/column/images-above-the-columns/

This is done using "bullet" syntax:

<value xid="0" color="#7F8DA9" bullet="0.gif">12999</value>

This allows you to display logos or any other image/animated SWF file above the columns.

Since v 1.3.6 all charts with axes can display axis’ values inside plot area, like in these examples:

http://www.amcharts.com/xy/

http://www.amcharts.com/line/auto-reloading-chart/

This is done by setting:

<inside>true</inside>

in the settings file (for the <values> you need to be inside).

Both horizontal and vertical axes values can be displayed inside plot area.

AmCharts.com web site has a new look. And not only the look - more examples, better navigation, possibility to view data and settings of examples and more!

And don’t forget to check our error page  :)

I am happy to announce availability of the first beta version of "ASP.NET Controls for amCharts".

"ASP.NET Controls for amCharts" is a set of data-bound .NET controls for generating the code required to display amCharts in your ASP.NET 2.x (or higher) web sites.

Generating data for amCharts and modifying settings on the fly requires a substantial amount of data transformations and XML generation. This is were "ASP.NET Controls for amCharts" step in. This set of ASP.NET controls allows .NET developers to work with amCharts as they would normally do with any native data-bound ASP.NET controls.

Currently ASP.NET controls include support for Pie & Donut charts only.

"ASP.NET Controls for amCharts" are available for immediate download from http://www.amcharts.com/aspnet and if you order commercial version now you can save more that 70%!

ASP.NET controls were developed in cooperation with Alan Mendelevich.