What is D3.js?

What is D3.js?

Introduction

D3.js (hereafter abridged as D3) is “a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data.”

But that description doesn’t do it justice. D3 is all about helping us take information and make it more accessible to others via a web browser.

The benefits of D3

• It’s a JavaScript library. That means that it’s a software tool that can be used in conjunction with other software tools to achieve a task.

  • Those other tools are based on web standards, such as HTML, SVG, and CSS. But we don’t need to know too much about them to start using D3 (although it will help).

• It’s an open framework. This means that there are no hidden mysteries about how it does its magic, and it allows others to contribute to a constant cycle of improvement.

• Being built to leverage web standards means that modern browsers don’t have to do anything special to use D3; they just have to support the framework that the Internet has adopted for ease of use.