SciChart.js v4.0 BETA: Everything You Should Know as the Release Date Approaches

We are pleased to announce that the long-awaited release of SciChart.js v.4 is approaching. You can try out BETA version right now. This is a huge release with many new features, but before we get to that, some important things to note:

1. This is a BETA update, so there may be bugs. Please report them at support.scichart.com and SciChart.js forum, making clear which version you are using.

2. Documentation and examples are not yet complete. We will be updating the documentation and the examples to explain and show off all the new features in the coming weeks. Once we have the key features reasonably covered, then we will remove the BETA tag and publish the new v4 demo with all the new examples.

3. This is a major release that has breaking changes, though these are mostly small and easy to update. We have a detailed list, including how to update at Breaking Changes in v4.

Adding More JavaScript Chart Possibilities With Polar Charts

Polar Chart Example

This release is all about adding more in-demand charting possibilities, the biggest of which is polar charts. Our polar charts support line, column, mountain, band, scatter and heatmap series. No other charting library lets you adjust polar charts with rotating and tilting layouts. Whenever you specify the rotation and total angle and inner radius, SciChart will automatically size and position the chart.

Full List of Polar Chart Features

You can find the full list of polar chart features, including chart types, annotations and interactive elements in the table below.

Discover some of the latest polar chart possibilities in the image gallery.

Polar Stacked Mountain Chart

Polar Gauge Chart

Polar Heatmap

Polar Scatter Chart

Radar Chart

Polar Area Chart

Cartesian Chart Types

We also introduced new cartesian chart types such as rectangle, box plot, line-segment, triangle and polygon charts and implemented some useful features like texture fills. These new series types can take various data formats, so we have refactored the DataSeries to be able to have any number of arrays, e.g., Xyx, Xyxy, a 5-value format specifically for box plots, XyN for sharing x values between multiple series, and the ability to easily define whatever format you need. The new HTMLTextAnnotation and HTMLCustomAnnotation allow you to add more responsive content to the chart.

Cartesian Chart Features

You can find the full list of cartesian chart updates in the table below.

Box Plot Chart

Triangle Series

Treemap Chart

Vector Field Plot

New Annotations & Chart Modifiers

There are new annotations, including arc segments, arrows and polar pointers, allowing you to create a huge variety of gauge charts. New polar chart modifiers provide the ability to rotate, zoom and pan in both cartesian and polar space to give you whatever view you want. Polar subcharts allow you to combine polar and cartesian charts on the same surface.

Axis & Series Inclusion

Axis and series inclusion are now standardized across modifiers, along with a new, more flexible way of specifying execute conditions for modifiers. Annotations now have their own clipping property, which applies to both native and SVG annotations, allowing for more annotation types to be used over the axes. Ordered rendering allows you to easily change the z-order of series and annotations, even allowing you to interleave series and annotations and define relative ordering.

Will v3 Still Be Supported?

We will continue to support version 3 with critical fixes for at least 6 months after v4 is fully released, but we encourage all users to update as soon as possible, as further features and fixes will only happen on v4.

When Will the v4 Release Be Fully Available?

We are currently creating documentation and examples and polishing the API. We hope that process will take 4–6 weeks. After that, we will publish the v4 release.

The screenshots throughout this article are all from our v4 examples app, which you can get and run from the release v4.0 branch of SciChart.JS.Examples on GitHub. This will be updated with demos over the next few months and will replace the live demo once v4 is fully released.

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