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I'm currently working on some data visualization project and wanted to know what would be my best development environment for it considering performance, deployment on mobile devices and different operating systems.

Simpler said something that works on as many things as possible without a lot problems and issues in performance (wishful thinking).

I'm not asking for Data Vis frameworks, libraries etc. but for best programming enviroment tips and combinations for data visualization in web.

JavaScript performance seems to be enough for the graphics but i'm not sure if it does for operations on huge Data sets, Arrays and String. I am currently considering writing the part for data handling, loading etc. in PHP and access it through javascript for in canvas visualizations/animations - but maybe JavaScript is powerfull enough for everything.

I'm not really experienced in programming, having more visual/designer background.

What are your thoughts?

Inoperable
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  • Can you give a better idea of the application? Where is the data stored? What is being visualized? – calebds Mar 15 '12 at 22:14
  • Nothing complicated in the beginning. Want to begin with some RSS feeds, parse them and iterate through the results for words occurrences for example. Saving data in a simple database would be nice as well. The Output would be based on ProcessingJS or on some custom code I'm working on. However I really want to make it simple as possible in the initial phase. – Inoperable Mar 15 '12 at 22:57

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The next version of Processing will allow you to save for Desktop, Android, and ProcessingJS very easily. I think in terms of workflow that developing in Processing and then making sure the web version works is a good workflow. There are a lot of web libraries for data vis, but the community around processing makes it very good for this type of work. You may find javascript to be too slow for some more ambitious projects, but it is getting faster all the time.

brunchstorm
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  • I'm looked into Processing 2.0 alpha. But I don't see that much of difference *yet* – Inoperable Mar 25 '12 at 16:48
  • http://wiki.processing.org/w/JavaScript - "The mode allows you to run and export your Processing.js sketches directly from inside the Processing environment. Running a sketch starts a server that delivers your sketch directly from it's export folder. This allows you to view and test your sketch on multiple browsers and even multiple devices if you are on a network." – brunchstorm Mar 27 '12 at 03:03
  • If you build from the google code site and click the box titled 'standard' in the top right corner of the IDE you can switch to javascript. – brunchstorm Mar 27 '12 at 03:18
  • In a browser the p5 code will load slower as it loads the applet. Once it is loaded it will likely run faster depending on your program. The web is probably the way to go in terms of maximizing the types of devices that will be compatible. Maybe take a look at http://raphaeljs.com/ too. – brunchstorm Apr 11 '12 at 08:30
  • isn't p5 running with canvas (bitmap data == faster?) instead of svg? – Inoperable Apr 11 '12 at 13:58
  • Yes, but depending on what you are doing it can be quite fast to develop in. Just another option. What you are deciding between is a balance between many factors, two of them being performance and ubiquity. I would toss development time in there as well, and as you are just getting started, you will probably have to try a few to get comfortable. Processing is a great one because you can deploy as java applets (can be yucky, but can also be fast) or js. – brunchstorm Apr 15 '12 at 20:01