On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 4:27 AM, Mike G <
mdgi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> D3 is elegant, fast, and light, which makes for a
> great development tool - hence the desire to try and find a way to make it
> work with older browsers.
Well, again: *D3* works just fine in older versions of IE. A lot of
the power in making super awesome visualizations with interactions
comes from SVG -- having a standard nested DOM with vector graphics is
really excellent -- but that simply does not exist in vanilla IE8-.
There are various hacks that kinda work (Chrome Frame being my
favorite), but they all have drawbacks.
The Raphael-based approaches will tend to expose differences between
VML and SVG, especially with respect to styling and interaction. (The
dojo.gfx tricks would let you add Silverlight and dojo's own canvas
interaction modalities into the mix, too. Joy!)
Ultimately, D3 only provides a limited part of what you'll need to
know to make a good interactive visualization. You'll also need to
understand your rendering and interaction layers at quite a deep
level. If you're living in an SVG-only world, that means your
experience in HTML helps you a lot -- and D3 does give you some good
shortcuts to apply styles and attributes, as well as create elements.
If you go Raphael, that's somewhat less true.
Asking for something that's exactly like D3 except that it works on
older IE versions without hacks is like asking for a flying car.
Everyone would like it, but that doesn't mean it exists, or that it
can practically exist. Sorry.
Best,
-Nate