Software Alternatives & Reviews

Observable VS D3.js

Compare Observable VS D3.js and see what are their differences

Observable logo Observable

Interactive code examples/posts

D3.js logo D3.js

D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS.
  • Observable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-09
  • D3.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-11

D3 allows you to bind arbitrary data to a Document Object Model (DOM), and then apply data-driven transformations to the document. For example, you can use D3 to generate an HTML table from an array of numbers. Or, use the same data to create an interactive SVG bar chart with smooth transitions and interaction.

D3 is not a monolithic framework that seeks to provide every conceivable feature. Instead, D3 solves the crux of the problem: efficient manipulation of documents based on data. This avoids proprietary representation and affords extraordinary flexibility, exposing the full capabilities of web standards such as HTML, SVG, and CSS. With minimal overhead, D3 is extremely fast, supporting large datasets and dynamic behaviors for interaction and animation. D3’s functional style allows code reuse through a diverse collection of official and community-developed modules.

Observable videos

Observable Overview

More videos:

  • Review - observablehq.com review observable hq data analysis
  • Review - Hands-on Data Visualization with Observable Plot

D3.js videos

Data Visualization with D3.js - Full Tutorial Course

More videos:

  • Review - Let's learn D3.js - D3 for data visualization (full course)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Observable and D3.js)
Data Visualization
43 43%
57% 57
Charting Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
Data Dashboard
33 33%
67% 67
Data Science And Machine Learning

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Observable and D3.js

Observable Reviews

Top 10 Grafana Alternatives in 2024
Observable is a Grafana alternative that enables users to visualize data via charts and dashboards using code.
Source: middleware.io
Embedded analytics in B2B SaaS: A comparison
A few options were disregarded from the start due to a hefty price tag, these were Looker, Tableau, Power BI, GoodData. A few options like Trevor.io, Preset, Observable were disregarded as they did not seem to fit our criteria (based on the evaluation matrix).
Source: medium.com

D3.js Reviews

6 JavaScript Charting Libraries for Powerful Data Visualizations in 2023
Depending on your requirements, the best JavaScript library is D3.js, as it’s by far the most customizable. However, it’s also really complex and difficult to master. Plus, it’s not as compatible with TypeScript as it is with JavaScript, which can be off-putting for some developers. If you’d prefer a less complex library that you can use with TypeScript, ECharts, and...
Source: embeddable.com
15 JavaScript Libraries for Creating Beautiful Charts
When we think of charting today, D3.js is the first name that comes up. Being an open source project, D3.js definitely brings many powerful features that were missing in most of the existing libraries. Features like dynamic properties, Enter and Exit, powerful transitions, and syntax familiarity with jQuery make it one the best JavaScript libraries for charting. Charts in...
Top 20 Javascript Libraries
D3 stands for Data-Driven Documents. With D3, you can apply data-driven transformations to DOM objects. The keyword with D3 is ‘data-driven,’ which means documents are manipulated depending on the data received. Data can be received in any format and bound with DOM objects. D3 is very fast and supports dynamic behavior for animation and interactions. There are plenty of...
Source: hackr.io
20+ JavaScript libraries to draw your own diagrams (2022 edition)
D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. Right now, I would say is the most popular library of its kind.
15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Another open source tool, D3.js is a JavaScript library for creating custom data visualizations in a web browser. Commonly known as D3, which stands for Data-Driven Documents, it uses web standards, such as HTML, Scalable Vector Graphics and CSS, instead of its own graphical vocabulary. D3's developers describe it as a dynamic and flexible tool that requires a minimum amount...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Observable should be more popular than D3.js. It has been mentiond 284 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Observable mentions (284)

  • A feature-rich front-end drag-and-drop component library
    Maybe I'm easy to impress, but I always stop and play around with the nested tree example when I come across Sortable. It works so flawlessly, and feels very tuned to mobile dnd. It even works to arrange (and reflow) inline spans in a paragraph! I have yet to come across this functionality in a text editor.. [0]: https://observablehq.com/@dleeftink/sortable-playground. - Source: Hacker News / 1 day ago
  • Parquet-WASM: Rust-based WebAssembly bindings to read and write Parquet data
    Arrow JS is just ArrayBuffers underneath. You do want to amortize some operations to avoid unnecessary conversions. I.e. Arrow JS stores strings as UTF-8, but native JS strings are UTF-16 I believe. Arrow is especially powerful across the WASM <--> JS boundary! In fact, I wrote a library to interpret Arrow from Wasm memory into JS without any copies [0]. (Motivating blog post [1]) [0]:... - Source: Hacker News / 4 days ago
  • A flat map with the least error possible: The Gott-Goldberg-Vanderbei projection
    Here’s the D3 implementation (which is just an interrupted azimuthal equidistant projection): https://observablehq.com/@d3/azimuthal-equidistant-hemispheres. - Source: Hacker News / 4 days ago
  • Hardest Problem in Computer Science: Centering Things
    I made a quick tool to apply the trick he suggests at the end of the article: https://observablehq.com/@gampleman/font-centering-tool. - Source: Hacker News / 9 days ago
  • Zooming User Interface (ZUI)
    There is maybe some room for design too (Figma), but there are many times I wish it DIDN'T do that and encouraged better frame/file organization instead. ------- It can also be useful for some visualizations, like taxonomy: https://itol.embl.de/itol.cgi or https://www.onezoom.org/life.html "Drill down for details" like in disk space analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKClylmlv3w&t=1s (or similar one in D3:... - Source: Hacker News / 11 days ago
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D3.js mentions (159)

  • A visual guide to Vision Transformer – A scroll story
    Yes this was done with a combination of GSAP Scrolltrigger https://gsap.com/docs/v3/Plugins/ScrollTrigger/ and https://d3js.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 days ago
  • Full Stack Web Development Concept map
    d3 - very power visualization library enabling dynamic visualizations. docs. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Observable 2.0, a static site generator for data apps
    Yep, Evidence is doing good work. We were most directly inspired by VitePress; we spent months rewriting both D3’s docs (https://d3js.org) and Observable Plot’s docs (https://observablehq.com/plot) in VitePress, and absolutely loved the experience. But we wanted a tool focused on data apps, dashboards, reports — observability and business intelligence use cases rather than documentation. Compared to Evidence, I’d... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • What is the technology stack used to create these live charts?
    They are images so it could be any number of things, datawrapper, charts.js, d3.js to name a few options. Source: 5 months ago
  • Animated map showing frequency and location of births around the world [OC]
    I made this interactive visualization that attempts to show the real-time frequency and location of births around the world. A country’s annual births (i.e. The country’s population times its birthrate) were distributed across all of the populated locations in each country, weighted by the population distribution (i.e. More populated areas got a greater fraction of the births). Data Sources and... Source: 5 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Observable and D3.js, you can also consider the following products

RunKit - RunKit notebooks are interactive javascript playgrounds connected to a complete node environment right in your browser. Every npm module pre-installed.

Chart.js - Easy, object oriented client side graphs for designers and developers.

Jupyter - Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.

Plotly - Low-Code Data Apps

Vega-Lite - High-level grammar of interactive graphics

Highcharts - A charting library written in pure JavaScript, offering an easy way of adding interactive charts to your web site or web application