In this article, you will find ten excellent Flash components that will help you in building stunningly attractive, complex, and interactive data visuals. These components will help you create an assortment of graphs and charts to aid in presenting otherwise boring and stale numerical data.

1. Open Flash Chart

Open Flash Chart is an open source Flash-based graphing and charting solution developed using ActionScript 3 and compiled using Flex. Open Flash Chart’s features include interactivity of your charts with tooltips, the ability to resize your charts client-side, and being able to save your graphs as images.

Its native data format is JSON, which makes it a breeze to work with for developers who know C-style language like Perl, Python, PHP, and of course, JavaScript. There’s some great Open Flash Chart tutorials to get you started right away.

Live Demonstrations: Open Flash Chart

2. XML/SWF Charts

XML/SWF Charts is a powerful Flash component for creating interactive graphs and charts. With XML/SWF, you can use XML to describe the data you’re wishing to plot, making it easy to create dynamically-generated and easily-maintainable Flash charts (i.e. you need only to alter the XML file instead of having to use Adobe Flash application). Check out this basic tutorial to get you up and running right away with XML/SWF Charts.

XML/SWF Charts is free to download and use, and the Free license only has a few features unavailable to you, such no technical support. The Single License and Bulk License is $49 and $59, respectively.

Live Demonstrations: XML/SWF Charts

3. zxChart

zxChart is a Flash component that allows you to create dynamic graphs and charts. It allows data input in numerous ways including static files (text files, XML) or via scripting (PHP, ASP, Perl, etc.). zxChart costs €35 (roughly $20).

4. amCharts

amCharts is a set of excellent Flash graphing/charting components for your web-based data visualization needs. amCharts can take in data from static files such as CSV or XML, as well as from dynamically-generated data inputs using popular scripting languages like PHP, .NET, Java, and Ruby on Rails.

Live Demonstrations: amCharts

5. Fly Charts

Fly Charts is a Flash component for graphing data. Fly Charts has an Online Wizard to help you quickly create your Flash charts, making it extremely accessible even to non-developers. Fly Charts has many outstanding features such as the ability to zoom into any section of a chart, the capability to become scrollable if the chart is too big, client-side interaction with JavaScript, and error-handling for missing data.

Fly Charts is available for free for private use but will contain a link to the Fly Charts website. Commercial-use and developer licenses range from $99 to $799.

Live Demonstrations: FlyCharts

6. AmiChart

AmiChart is an easy to use and user-friendly Flash-based graphing component that can create animated column, line, and pie charts. AmiChart is Microsoft Office friendly, offering you the ability to embed graphs and charts into your PowerPoint slides and use data copied from an Excel spreadsheet for your data inputs. You can also use CSV file for data input.

AmiChart has a 15-day free evaluation which gives you unfettered access to all its features. A single-user license costs $39.

Live Demonstrations: AmiChart

7. Black Box Chart

Black Box Chart is a free Flash component for charting data on the web. Black Box Chart offers you an interactive solution for data visualization, clicking on data points of bar graphs outputs the data value. The Black Box Chart editor is a tool that you can use for creating and editing your charts using a graphical user interface (GUI).

Live Demonstrations: Black Box Chart

8. flashCharts

flashCharts is a set of five attractive, animated, and data-driven Flash components for use in the creation of dynamic, as well as static, charts. flashCharts components are designed specifically for developers or designers, so whatever your background, you’ll be able to use it. It’s lightweight, weighing in at only 12KB, and has an ActionScript API for easily working with your charts and graphs. The whole set costs $99, but you can buy some components separately starting at roughly $30.

Live Demonstration: flashCharts barchart

9. FusionCharts

FusionCharts is an excellent Flash component for creating animated and interactive charts for the web or desktop applications. FusionCharts integrates with a lot of web technologies including PHP, ASP.NET, JSP, RoR and a bunch of other acronyms. With FusionCharts, you have access to over 45 types of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional charts. Check out the user showcase to see actual applications of FusionCharts.

There are five types of licenses for FusionCharts, and the price ranges from $69 for a user license all the way up to $1,999 for an enterprise license.

Live Demonstrations: FusionCharts

10. Origramy

Origramy is a graph editor and viewer Flash component. You can use it to create complex and interactive graphs and charts for presenting data. Origramy is available free for private use but will contain a link to Origramy – commercial licenses start at $99.

Live Demonstrations: Origramy

What’s your graphing solution?

Do you deal with data visualization? What do you use and why? Have any experience with the Flash components above? Share your thoughts and opinions on this topic in the comments!

Related content

• Graphing/Charting Data on Web Pages: JavaScript Solutions
• 8 CSS Techniques for Charting Data
• 12 Websites To Help You Learn Flash/ActionScript

In this article, you’ll find 12 wonderful websites that’s worth a bookmark if you’re looking into sharpening your Flash development skills. For each entry, you’ll find three tutorials from the website so that you can see what’s in store for you.

1. kirupa.com

kirupa.com is a site that features excellent Flash tutorials (as well as Silverlight, ASP.net, PHP, and Photoshop). There are plenty of well-written, detailed tutorials and articles pertaining to Flash sectioned into seven categories including Basic Drawing, Special Effects, Server-side Flash, and Game Development.

Tutorial examples:

• Simple Page Transitions
• Creating and Animating Clouds
• Falling Text

2. gotoandlearn.com

Some people learn best by visualization and following along with the instructor step-by-step in real-time. If you’re the type that prefers to learn by watching instructional videos, check out gotoandlearn.com – a website by Lee Brimelow that offers free Flash video tutorials.

Tutorial examples:

• ActionScript 3 Sound Basics
• Creating 3D Carousels
• Creating Flash Tooltips

3. gotoAndPlay()

gotoAndPlay() is dedicated to providing resources for Flash game developers. It’s a community that has a forum, interviews from professional developers, and reviews of books and resources. It also has tutorials and articles about Flash game development that can be filtered by topic, expertise, and type.

Tutorial examples:

• Developing a space shooter game
• Skeletal Animations
• How to protect SWFs from decompilers?

4. Adobe – Flash Developer Center

Adobe’s Flash Developer Center is a community for Flash developers. Here, you’ll find tutorials, articles, and related resources about Flash. You should also check out the ActionScript Technology Center for articles on specifically about ActionScript.

Tutorial examples:

• Using ActionScript to pause and loop the timeline in Flash
• Drawing with the Pen tool
• Creating a 3D button animation for Flash

5. Flash Kit

Flash Kit is one of the biggest and oldest community dedicated to Flash development. With over 600,000 members, you won’t have a hard time finding people with a similar interest in Flash. There’s a forums section, free resources that you can download and use in your Flash projects, and a large tutorials section that includes 18 categories.

Tutorial examples:

• Making movieclips point at the mouse
• Move a sprite with the keyboard
• How to use hitTest in a simple game

6. ActionScript.org

ActionScript.org is a site that provides resources and information pertaining to Flash, Flex, and ActionScript. They have a fairly active Forums section as well as an ActionScript Library that currently has over 700 objects you can download.

Tutorial examples:

• Drawing Shapes with AS3
• Simple reflection effect with AS2
• Physics in ActionScript 3.0

7. Flash and Math ActionScript 3 Tutorials

Flash and Math has a great collection of tutorials on AS3. They cover basic to advanced topics so that Flash developers of any level can find something they can read and learn from. Many of the tutorials include the source files for download.

Tutorial examples:

• Drag-and-Drop in Flash CS3
• Tween Tricks in Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3
• Simple 3D Drawing in Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3

8. Flash Tutorials on Pixel2Life

Pixel2Life, according to the site, is the "largest tutorial index catering to graphic designers, webmasters and programmers". With over 40,000 indexed tutorials, you’ll find many links to tutorials in their Flash Tutorials section.

Indexed tutorial examples:

• Creating a Basic Flash Website (AS3 Version)
• Actionscript 3 Timer Class
• Stars animation above the city

9. Flash Perfection

Flash Perfection is a website with a large collection of Flash tutorials, tips, and tricks from various websites. Flash Perfection has 23 categories to help you find information more quickly.

Indexed tutorial examples:

• Atmospheric Steam
• Optimizing your Flash SWFs
• Quick and Easy Zoom Effect in Flash

10. metah.ch

metah.ch has some awesome video tutorials on Flash, ActionScript, Flex, and AIR. Files associated with the tutorials can be downloaded and used in your own projects.

Tutorial examples:

• Introduction to Loop and Event in AS3
• Connecting AS3 with a Database
• Interaction between AS3 and JavaScript

11. LukaMaras.com

LukaMaras.com offers detailed Flash tutorials and resources designed to help you learn Flash. There’s also a small forums section with over 3,000 registered users where you can discuss anything related to Flash.

Tutorial examples:

1. ActionScript drop-down menus
2. How to make pixel buttons in Flash the easy way.
3. How to make an amazing dynamic image gallery in Flash 8

12. Flashmagazine

Flashmagazine is an online magazine dedicated to Flash news, reviews, information, and resources. The Tutorials section has some excellent tutorials for Flash developers.

Tutorial examples:

• How to make a custom AS3 preloader
• AS3 Photo gallery
• Rollover effect using masks

I hope you found this article useful! Since there’s so many websites out there dedicated to Flash development, I can’t include them all, so if you didn’t see your favorite – please share it with all of us in the comments.