Flot is pretty extensible via plugins but some logics from its core could block the developer to include new features or even modify the default features (like "autoHighlight") so this fork redefines the flot.js core as the (static) Internal prototype, allowing the developer to modify / extend the core easily. This fork blocks any extension or modification from the runtime as well. In resume, more secure and versatile code for this useful plugin.
Check the original project at https://github.com/flot/flot
Visit the original website at http://www.flotcharts.org/
API at API reference
This fork code at https://github.com/arm4design/flot
Easy, anytime you don't want to fork and change the flot.js code. Using the Internal prototype allows you to include those changes without creating your own fork.
Most of the modifications you would like to include in flot.js could be done using the traditional plugins approach, but in several cases you will be overriding default features which means to deploy the original feature and after that, deploy the plugin feature. Using Internal you will get your Flot implementation much lighter.
It's true that using the Internal prototype, it can be accessed in runtime since Plot instance contains an Internal instance. Don't be worried about possible hacks in runtime cause those instances are inmutables once are instantiated.
Just include the Javascript file after you've included jQuery.
Generally, all browsers that support the HTML5 canvas tag are supported.
For support for Internet Explorer < 9, you can use Excanvas excanvas, a canvas emulator; this is used in the examples bundled with Flot. You just include the excanvas script like this:
<!--[if lte IE 8]><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="excanvas.min.js"></script><![endif]-->If it's not working on your development IE 6.0, check that it has support for VML which Excanvas is relying on. It appears that some stripped down versions used for test environments on virtual machines lack the VML support.
You can also try using Flashcanvas, which uses Flash to do the emulation. Although Flash can be a bit slower to load than VML, if you've got a lot of points, the Flash version can be much faster overall. Flot contains some wrapper code for activating Excanvas which Flashcanvas is compatible with.
You need at least jQuery 1.2.6, but try at least 1.3.2 for interactive charts because of performance improvements in event handling.
Create a placeholder div to put the graph in:
<div id="placeholder"></div>You need to set the width and height of this div, otherwise the plot library doesn't know how to scale the graph. You can do it inline like this:
<div id="placeholder" style="width:600px;height:300px"></div>You can also do it with an external stylesheet. Make sure that the placeholder isn't within something with a display:none CSS property - in that case, Flot has trouble measuring label dimensions which results in garbled looks and might have trouble measuring the placeholder dimensions which is fatal (it'll throw an exception).
Then when the div is ready in the DOM, which is usually on document ready, run the plot function:
$.plot($("#placeholder"), data, options);Here, data is an array of data series and options is an object with settings if you want to customize the plot. Take a look at the examples for some ideas of what to put in or look at the API reference. Here's a quick example that'll draw a line from (0, 0) to (1, 1):
$.plot($("#placeholder"), [ [[0, 0], [1, 1]] ], { yaxis: { max: 1 } });The plot function immediately draws the chart and then returns a plot object with a couple of methods.