Interactive Data Visualization for the Web, 2nd Edition

Appendix C. Further Study

We’ve covered a lot of ground, and by now you have a decent handle on D3’s basic concepts and common techniques. If you’ve learned anything, I hope it’s that there are always several (or tens, or hundreds of) ways to accomplish the same task—that’s the joy of programming, right? I’ve presented the ways that, to me, are the simplest or most intuitive, and the least difficult to understand. But there are probably better ways to do anything that you learned in this book, whether “better” means “more computationally efficient” or “makes more sense to you and your way of working.” I’m a fan of the latter definition. Programming is like solving a puzzle; it’s up to you to figure out how to tell the computer what to do what you want—using language that you, the human, can still understand.

D3 is a powerful tool, and we’ve only scratched the surface. As you begin work on your own visualization projects, you’ll discover many additional helpful methods and sneaky shortcuts. There are lots of valuable bits that I didn’t cover here, such as D3’s built-in methods for dynamically calculating colors, manipulating arrays, and nesting data into custom structures—just to name a few. There is a lot to this tool. I’ve introduced you to the core concepts, and now you’re ready to dig in deeper.

So, where to turn next? Here’s a collection of valuable resources to aid you in your quest. Keep in mind that the D3 software itself continues to evolve, and so do these resources. ...