1## Frequently asked questions ## 2 3#### How much data can Flot cope with? #### 4 5Flot will happily draw everything you send to it so the answer 6depends on the browser. The excanvas emulation used for IE (built with 7VML) makes IE by far the slowest browser so be sure to test with that 8if IE users are in your target group (for large plots in IE, you can 9also check out Flashcanvas which may be faster). 10 111000 points is not a problem, but as soon as you start having more 12points than the pixel width, you should probably start thinking about 13downsampling/aggregation as this is near the resolution limit of the 14chart anyway. If you downsample server-side, you also save bandwidth. 15 16 17#### Flot isn't working when I'm using JSON data as source! #### 18 19Actually, Flot loves JSON data, you just got the format wrong. 20Double check that you're not inputting strings instead of numbers, 21like [["0", "-2.13"], ["5", "4.3"]]. This is most common mistake, and 22the error might not show up immediately because Javascript can do some 23conversion automatically. 24 25 26#### Can I export the graph? #### 27 28You can grab the image rendered by the canvas element used by Flot 29as a PNG or JPEG (remember to set a background). Note that it won't 30include anything not drawn in the canvas (such as the legend). And it 31doesn't work with excanvas which uses VML, but you could try 32Flashcanvas. 33 34 35#### The bars are all tiny in time mode? #### 36 37It's not really possible to determine the bar width automatically. 38So you have to set the width with the barWidth option which is NOT in 39pixels, but in the units of the x axis (or the y axis for horizontal 40bars). For time mode that's milliseconds so the default value of 1 41makes the bars 1 millisecond wide. 42 43 44#### Can I use Flot with libraries like Mootools or Prototype? #### 45 46Yes, Flot supports it out of the box and it's easy! Just use jQuery 47instead of $, e.g. call jQuery.plot instead of $.plot and use 48jQuery(something) instead of $(something). As a convenience, you can 49put in a DOM element for the graph placeholder where the examples and 50the API documentation are using jQuery objects. 51 52Depending on how you include jQuery, you may have to add one line of 53code to prevent jQuery from overwriting functions from the other 54libraries, see the documentation in jQuery ("Using jQuery with other 55libraries") for details. 56 57 58#### Flot doesn't work with [insert name of Javascript UI framework]! #### 59 60Flot is using standard HTML to make charts. If this is not working, 61it's probably because the framework you're using is doing something 62weird with the DOM or with the CSS that is interfering with Flot. 63 64A common problem is that there's display:none on a container until the 65user does something. Many tab widgets work this way, and there's 66nothing wrong with it - you just can't call Flot inside a display:none 67container as explained in the README so you need to hold off the Flot 68call until the container is actually displayed (or use 69visibility:hidden instead of display:none or move the container 70off-screen). 71 72If you find there's a specific thing we can do to Flot to help, feel 73free to submit a bug report. Otherwise, you're welcome to ask for help 74on the forum/mailing list, but please don't submit a bug report to 75Flot. 76