Sparklines are an invention by Edward Tufte and are a great way to provide a bare-bones and space efficient time-series context for measures (Few, Stephen. 2006. Information Dashboard Design). If you would like to read more up on Sparklines I suggest you get Edward Tuftes book Beautiful Evidence – there is a whole chapter dedicated to Sparklines.
Below is a list of open source and free tools which support or are dedicated to creating Sparklines or Microcharts.
Jquery Sparkline
This jQuery plugin generates Sparklines (small inline charts) directly in the browser using data supplied either inline in the HTML, or via javascript.
Last updated : 14th of September, 2009
Requirements : jQuery 1.2+
Supported chart types : Line, Bar, Tristate, Discrete, Bullet, Pie, Box
Sparklines for Excel
A set of free User Defined Functions for Excel to create Sparklines. This is probably the most flexible and up to date sparkline implementation for Excel 2003 and 2007.
Last updated : 02/04/2010 (Excel 2003) and 01/25/2010 (Excel 2007)
Requirements : Excel 2003 and 2007
Supported chart types : Line, Area, Bar, Horizon, Vari, Bullet, Scale, Pie, Stacked, Box Plot, Spread, Stripe
Pentaho Report Designer
The ability to create Sparklines is now a feature of Pentaho Report Designer 3.5+.
Last updated : 27/10/2009
Requirements : Pentaho Report Designer 3.5+
Supported chart types : Line, Bar
Google Visulization API
Single or multiple sparklines that are rendered with images using the Google Charts API. The images are contained in a HTML table.
The Google Chart API is an extremely simple tool that lets you easily create a chart from some data and embed it in a webpage. You embed the data and formatting parameters in an HTTP request, and Google returns a PNG image of the chart. Many types of chart are supported, and by making the request into an image tag you can simply include the chart in a webpage.
Last updated : Unknown
Requirements : Flash
Supported chart types : Line
Sparkline PHP Graphing Library
A PHP based graphing library to create Sparklines.
Last updated : 10th of November, 2007
Requirements : PHP 4.0.6+, GD 2.0 built as a PHP module
Supported chart types : Line, Bar
Sparklines for Java
Sparklines for java is a package that contains a Servlet that can be added to a web project to create sparklines based on request parameters. It also includes a taglib for easily formatting the required parameters. There’s also an API to directly create a BufferedImage in any Java code.
Last updated : 3/11/2007
Requirements : Java
Supported chart types : Line, Bar
Sparklines (Ruby)
A library for generating small sparkline graphs from Ruby. Use it in desktop apps or with Ruby on Rails.
Last updated : 17/02/2009
Requirements : Ruby
Supported chart types : Line, Bar, Bullet, Pie, Discrete, Area
NanoCharts
NanoCharts is an Excel 2003 supported add-in where users can add in Sparklines into cells.
Last updated : 08/10/2008
Requirements : Excel 2003
Supported chart types : Line, Bar, Dot
Sparklines Excel Add-in – TinyGraphs
TinyGraphs is an open source add-in for Excel that creates sparklines, mini column graphs, and area graphs from a row of data. It generates beautiful tiny graphics that are as small as a cell and is useful for visualizing large quantities of data, such as stock prices and exchange rates.
Last updated : Unknown
Requirements : Excel 2000, 2003 and 2007
Supported chart types : Line, Bar, Area
Tufte Sparklines Photoshop Script
The Tufte Sparklines Photoshop script automates the production of sparklines. It works by reading a data series from a text file and plotting a sparkline image as a Photoshop path, and then stroking it with the pencil tool. This produces a bitmap image which can then be cut-and-pasted into the target document.
Last updated : 24/02/2008
Requirements : Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2, CS3
Supported chart types : Line
sparklines.js
parklines.js is a simple javascript utility for building sparklines. It has support for displaying lines at percentage points and at fixed values in terms of your data set.
Last updated : Unknown
Requirements : Processing.js 0.4
Supported chart types : Line
Know of anymore? Let me know and I’ll add them to this list.
Enjoy.