Hands-On Data Visualization

Chapter 10. Edit and Host Code with GitHub

In Parts I and II, you created interactive charts and maps on free drag-and-drop tool platforms created by companies such as Google and Tableau. These platforms are great for beginners, but their preset tools limit your options for designing and customizing your visualizations, and they also require you to depend upon their web servers and terms of service to host your data and work products. If these companies change their tools or terms, you have little choice in the matter, other than deleting your account and switching services, which means that your online charts and maps would appear to audiences as dead links.

In Parts III and IV, get ready to make a big leap—and we’ll help you through every step—by learning how to copy, edit, and host code templates. These templates are prewritten software instructions that allow you to upload your data, customize its appearance, and display your interactive charts and maps on a website that you control. No prior coding experience is required, but it helps if you’re code-curious and willing to experiment with your computer.

Code templates are similar to cookbook recipes. Imagine you’re in your kitchen, looking at our favorite recipe we’ve publicly shared to make brownies (yum!), which begins with these three steps: Melt butter, Add sugar, Mix in cocoa. Recipes are templates, meaning that you can follow them precisely or modify them to suit your tastes. Imagine that you copy our recipe (or “fork” ...