Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Bullet Graph - Free Flex Component

I was recently reading Stephen Few's book entitled "Information Dashboard Design" and was exposed to many examples of the "bullet graph". While most of the examples show them being used to show sales type targets, it got me to thinking that they may be a good way to show actual time spent vs. the estimated time for a project in Klok. I found that there was no out-of-the-box component that met the specs that Mr. Few describes. So, I decided to put one together for myself. Here is a screenshot.


Granted, this could probably be made more configurable, but this is just the first crack at it. So, right now, you can set the label, target, actual value and give the ranges that would indicate "bad", "satisfactory" or "good". You can also specify how many tick marks should be shown on the quantitative scale.

Feel free to check it out here (view source is enabled) or download the zip here.

I highly recommend Stephen's book for anyone who is creating any application that needs to display complex data. You don't have to be building a traditional "Dashboard" put his suggestions to good use.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

did you know dotoproject?
how about integrate Klok with dotproject?

:)
Pedro

Anonymous said...

Such visual cues would be invaluable. It will help users manage their time more precisely. I would love to see that in a future Klok version.

-M

Anonymous said...

Nice job! This should be included in Adobe's Flex Viz Library. A charting component package is not complete without a bullet graph. It could make or break an OEM deal.

Anonymous said...

ur blog Is very nice

Ray Creations said...

Thanks for your suggestion. I will have to buy Stephen's book.
Web Developer  |   Web Design

Anonymous said...

I am hearing about this Klock for the first time. Can it be installed across all platforms? Web Designer Web Hosting

Anonymous said...

Thank you for sharing such an informative article with us.
Web Design  |   Web Designer

mishel said...

Your blog is nice, It is very useful, but please remove the many good for nothing comments that take up a major portion of each page!

Website Designing India said...

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