Chronoscope in Swing and Servlet environments

After pushing out the open source release of Chronoscope, I finally went back to work on Timelord, which is our all-purpose GWT application for exploring our time series database, data mining, annotating visualizations, and tons more. Hopefully I can get it patched up to show something at the Pearson GWT Conference

Anyway, when data mining, Timelord shows icons to the user of interesting patterns which are server-side generated Chronoscope charts. The intense refactoring for the open source release broke the server-side implementation, so I spent most of yesterday and today, re-merging in and fixing the Java2D Canvas implementation layer.

I just finished getting a prototype up and running, and decided to put up a demo of Chronoscope running as an Applet (it's alittle beefy to download at the moment, I was able to pack200 it down to 120kbytes, but haven't gotten the webserver reconfigured yet to serve pack200 files.) This brings to 4 the number of environments the Chronoscope codebase can exist in: Browser-based Javascript, Swing desktop applications and Applets, Servlet-generators, and the Google Android phone SDK.

After the GWT Conference, I'll push to get a Flash implementation done, in which case, you'll have the choice of generating charts via Canvas, Applet, Flash, or Server. That will leave only J2ME as the final target to crack.

I'll commit the Java2D layer after the conference and things settle down. We've been working on Timepedia slowly for years now, and I'm anxious to start showing some of the real site, so I want to get Chronoscope development stabilized soon. (code-freeze)

-Ray

Chronoscope responsiveness increased

Yesterday, we received reports of slowness in Chronoscope on low end PCs. Admittedly, we didn't do testing on any PCs from yesteryear, but we will do so in the future.

In any case, we made some changes to Chronoscope that should make it feel faster on low end PCs:

• Animation was uninterruptible and fixed at 8 frames. On a slower PC that takes longer than 300ms or so to render these frames, there is a distinct feeling of lag when you press a key. Animations in progress are now interruptible.
  
• Key frame interpolation was frame count based instead of wall clock based. Interpolation frames are now parameterized based on time, and maximum animation time is capped at 300ms. Faster computers just generate a higher framerate for smoother, less jumpy, rendering.
  
• Lowered the resolution of the dataset further when animating. Future versions will auto-adapt this to platform speed.
  
• The final 'full resolution' dataset used to be displayed, no matter what, after an animation sequence finished (between keypresses). Now, it is delayed a short time until the user stops navigating.
  

The changed version has been deployed to timepedia.org for testing, but not committed to the source code repository yet. Check it out and let us know if you still have performance problems.

The only known issue at the moment is that mouse dragging on some platforms is jerky and laggy. We are looking into fixing this next.

-Timepedia Team

GWT and Android: A marriage made in heaven?

The Google Web Toolkit has many awesome advantages for developing AJAX applications: Reuse of your favorite toolchain features (IDE, codeassist, debugger, refactor, build, etc), as well as producing much more compact Javascript code than any JS compiler/obfuscator can ever hope for. But one feature that initially caught our eye was the ability to reuse code in multiple environments.

Chronoscope started as two separate projects. The first, a prototype server-side renderer for Timepedia using the very capable JFreeChart. The second, a pure-JS canvas version written to test the ability to do AJAX charts without Flash. The JFreeChart version then became the version which would be used for static chart icons, sparklines, fallback for older browsers, and export to PDF/SVG.

Immediately, we encountered the problem that the two code bases had different features, different rendering style, which required laborious coding to keep them matched as close as possible. Over time, as the feature sets evolved, it became harder and harder to keep the JS client charts and server-side charts in sync.

Then Google released GWT and it immediately offered a solution: Write one chart library, in Java, and deploy to Servlet, Applet, Browser JS, and maybe J2ME and Flash. It was an enormous promise, and we initially adopted GWT for this purpose without realizing the other tremendous benefits that GWT provides for developing large JS codebases.

Early on, we produced prototypes of GWT Chronoscope running in servlet and applet environments, but with the release of the Android SDK, the initial promise has been fulfilled: GWT code running in a mobile environment.

The following is a screencast demo showing Chronoscope, with no changes to the core codebase running in the Android SDK emulator natively (not in the web browser).



It required about 8 hours to get this working. Most of the time was spent finding the Android equivalents of Java2D calls, and writing 6 Java classes (the Chronoscope Canvas abstraction layered over Android Graphics API)

At this point, we've only touched the tip of the iceberg. Future enhancements in GWT may allow this portability to go even further, such as compiling to ActionScript.

If your attending the GWT Conference on December 3-6, feel free to track down Ray Cromwell or Shawn O'Connor for a live demo.


p.s. There are no ticks or axis labels being shown in the sceencast to maximize screen real estate as well as performance. Android SDK text rendering is a drag on performance at the moment.

Chronoscope Released

Timepedia is happy to announce the first beta release of Chronoscope, our charting and visualization platform for Google Web Toolkit, as open source. Chronoscope provides several features for the AJAX developer:

• Canvas abstraction for drawing vector graphs
  
• Graph Style Sheets abstraction for configuring the look-and-feel of charts
  
• Scalable multiresolution rendering supporting up to tens of thousands of points
  
• Zoom and pan at interactive frame rates, from centuries to milliseconds
  
• Auto-ranging, auto-layout of chart axes and ticks.
  
• Auto-legend, and mini-chart Overview
  
• Add pushpin markers, domain and range markers, and overlays like Google Maps
  
• Bookmarkable chart state, works with Back button
  
• JS interopability. GWT API can be used by pure Javascript programmers
  
• Microformat support. Charts can be configured without programming.
  
• Server-side Font assistance. Render rotated text.
  
• Portable, Chronoscope is not tied to GWT, can be used to render from servlets, applets, or other environments.
  

You can see a demo of the chart in action on our demo site. WARNING: Chronoscope currently supports only Firefox, Safari, and Opera (with a few caveats) for the beta release. Internet Explorer is scheduled to be available soon through a Flash version.

Many of our readers have been eagerly awaiting the release, and we have been burning the midnight oil the last few weeks reorganizing, documenting, and cleaning up the code base for the public.

Chronoscope is free of charge, and is distributed under the LGPL. We hope that many people interested in charting and graphics within GWT will join the Chronoscope project at http://code.google.com/p/gwt-chronoscope and help us build an awesome visualization platform.

Timepedia has been working over the last two years on a search engine which indexes time-related quantitative data, and provides users tools to play with visualizing data, find interesting patterns, and communicating insights. We want to make Chronoscope the best visualization tool, but we need your help to make it better.

There are four ways you can help us:

1) Chronoscope contains a small unobstrustive credit "Powered by Timepedia Chronoscope" which can be switched off. If you use Chronoscope, and want to help us promote Chronoscope, you can choose to leave it switched on.

2) You can become active in contributing code to the project. See the project page.

3) You can choose to donate a small sum of money, whatever you deem appropriate.

4) If you are a commercial company, and interested in official technical support, we sell support licenses, as well as a non-LGPL licensed version. See http://timepedia.org/chronoscope/license if interested.

We thank everyone for their patience over the last month, and hope you think this project is as cool as we do.

For those interested in meeting in person to discuss GWT based visualization and vector graphics, Ray Cromwell will be presenting at the upcoming Voices that Matter: Google Web Toolkit conference. During Breakfast with the Speakers, or after the conference, feel free to hunt him down if you want to chat. For those who wish to register, you can use a code of "GW-CROM" during registration to get $100 off the registration price.