CSCE 590: Problem Set 2

Due: Monday, 7 April 2008 @2:30pm

Easy Chart Generator

Figure 1:Sketchy mockup of the type of GUI we are looking for. It is up to you to transform this sorry sketch into a useful, intuitive, and pretty interface.

For this problem set you will implement a user friendly chart generator that uses the google chart API to do the drawing. Your application will be entirely written in javascript (plus whatever HTML+CSS you need) and will not require any backend service, except for the one provided by the google chart API.

Your use case scenario is a political blogger who wants to make his mind-blindingly brilliant point by embedding a chart in his blog. Of course, he does not have time to learn to use the chart API and thinks blogger.com is really complicated to use. Thus, you want to make everything as simple and directly manipulable as possible. Remember, if you make it even a little bit complicated he will quit in frustration and go back to writing, then everybody loses.

The basic interface is shown in Figure 1 and consists of a table with empty text boxes which the user can fill in with the appropiate data. This is just a rough guideline, you will need to figure out the details of the interface. Some features you must have are:

  1. Data is entered in a table format, as shown. The user should be able to add and delete rows and columns whenever he wishes.
  2. The user must be able to specify the color for each data line.
  3. The user must be able to specify the title of the chart, whether line or bar, whether he wants a legend or not, and background color.
  4. The graph must be updated after every change the user makes.
  5. You must display the URL used for generating the chart so the user can cut and paste it into his blog.

You only have to make it work for firefox.

Submission Instructions

You will zip all the files and email them to me. You will also do an in class demo on the due date. Note that your complete application must run by simply loading it into firefox. It should not require any back end servlet.


A funny comic strip.

José M. Vidal
Last modified: Wed Feb 27 16:04:22 EST 2008