Highcharts has many great features, here is my top 5:

1. It is written in *pure* JavaScript – Unlike many of the Flash based charting libraries, Highcharts is written in JavaScript. Why is this such a great thing? Usability, of course! If you are looking to create a data visualization that will need to work on more than just laptop and desktop computers (such as iPad, iPhone, iPod, mobile phones, and game consoles), and need interactivity – JavaScript is your best bet. These charts display beautifully on such devices – check out Campaign Monitor’s adoption of Highcharts for proof. On top of this, the code is well written, and well tested, which results in an extremely fast rendering of each chart.
2. It’s interactive, with plenty of customization – Highcharts allows the developer to write custom code that is called from multiple events (click, mouseOver, mouseOut, and show are just a few). With this ability charts can become extremely interactive, allowing users to interact with data they otherwise couldn’t.
3. Developer provides fantastic support – Many projects out there today are just side projects for developers, which is great, but means that support is fairly limited. Torstein Hønsi is developing Highcharts and Highslide full time – so depending on your timezone you can typically get a response within the day for almost any question you may have.
4. Great documention – Typically the last thing to come out of a software project is the documentation, and even then its always pretty sketch – or just generated docs. Highcharts offers a great demo page, as well as a complete options reference, and how-to page. Nine times out of Ten, I’m able to answer my own question by checking out one of these pages – that tenth time, see bullet #3 .
5. The price is right – Cheaper than its Flash competitor, Fusion Charts, Highcharts is offered at a great price for what it can offer your company or product. If for some reason you have more than 2 or 3 developers working on your charts it will run you around $500 USD, but chances are if you have this many developers on your products, your return on that investment is quite high as you are charging quite a bit for your product.

As you can see, in just my top 5 reasons, Highcharts is very attractive. There isn’t much of a development community behind the library at this time, so if you want to help contribute to such projects checkout the Rails plugin, or the PHP plugin to offer your expertise!

I was just hired to complete X, but every time I share ideas with the client they seem to think they know more than I do, what’s the deal?

Over the last few years I have noticed an ugly trend developing. It seems that in the ever growing (and broad) field of technology, the individuals hired to render services for clients are rarely looked at as the expert – even though they were hired, because nobody in house has the knowledge to complete the task. This person was hired because they are knowledgeable; so regardless of what you think looks good, is a best practice, or is easier for users – you’re probably wrong.

So, next time you hire someone, keep in mind why you hired that person. Don’t tell them you want the logo bigger, the music louder, or more spacing – go do your job, and let them do theirs.