summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/README.md
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'README.md')
-rw-r--r--README.md110
1 files changed, 110 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4de7bde
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,110 @@
+# Flot [![Build status](https://travis-ci.org/flot/flot.png)](https://travis-ci.org/flot/flot)
+
+## About ##
+
+Flot is a Javascript plotting library for jQuery.
+Read more at the website: <http://www.flotcharts.org/>
+
+Take a look at the the examples in examples/index.html; they should give a good
+impression of what Flot can do, and the source code of the examples is probably
+the fastest way to learn how to use Flot.
+
+
+## Installation ##
+
+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:
+
+```html
+<!--[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][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.
+
+
+## Basic usage ##
+
+Create a placeholder div to put the graph in:
+
+```html
+<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:
+
+```html
+<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:
+
+```js
+$.plot($("#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](API.md). Here's a quick example that'll draw a line
+from (0, 0) to (1, 1):
+
+```js
+$.plot($("#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.
+
+
+## What's with the name? ##
+
+First: it's pronounced with a short o, like "plot". Not like "flawed".
+
+So "Flot" rhymes with "plot".
+
+And if you look up "flot" in a Danish-to-English dictionary, some of
+the words that come up are "good-looking", "attractive", "stylish",
+"smart", "impressive", "extravagant". One of the main goals with Flot
+is pretty looks.
+
+
+## Notes about the examples ##
+
+In order to have a useful, functional example of time-series plots using time
+zones, date.js from [timezone-js][timezone-js] (released under the Apache 2.0
+license) and the [Olson][olson] time zone database (released to the public
+domain) have been included in the examples directory. They are used in
+examples/axes-time-zones/index.html.
+
+
+[excanvas]: http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/
+[flashcanvas]: http://code.google.com/p/flashcanvas/
+[timezone-js]: https://github.com/mde/timezone-js
+[olson]: ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/