D3 (or D3.js for data-driven documents), which is a JavaScript library used for data visualization, is described in this book.

The book is intended for JavaScript developers, though some chapters can be used to understand data visualization problems and techniques.

The first chapter shows the types of charts (bar, pie, line, bubble), and how to display charts on the web, by using either Hypertext Markup Language 5 (HTML5) or scalable vector graphics (SVG). The way to run and debug JavaScript is also briefly presented.

I found chapter 2 the most important because it shows the D3 techniques to display charts that are based on customer data. It uses the document object model (DOM) of the HTML document, where the data is displayed. D3 selects parts of the document and applies operators to this selection. An important operator is append, which allows adding elements to the HTML page, such as lines in a list. The charts in D3 are created by adding SVG elements, such as circles or polygons.

The next six chapters show in detail how to create simple types of charts--line, bar, or pie charts--or more complicated ones--candlestick, scatterplot, bubble, and radar charts. Some mathematical aspects are presented: domain, range, and the transformation scale. These chapters contain mostly the code in D3 and the charts produced. The data used here is stored in text files (of the .csv or .tsv types).

Chapter 9 shows how to get real data directly from a database. The last chapters show how to add controls to charts (such as checkboxes or sliders) and how to work with D3 layouts.

This book is very useful, because D3 is new and popular software. The presentation is clear, especially when it comes to more difficult concepts. The documentation is detailed and accompanied by many code snippets.