February 20th, 2007

Charts in Google Spreadsheet are imminent

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:07 pm

Categories: Google Docs, Google Speculation

Tags:

With the launch of Google Docs & Spreadsheets for Google Apps around the corner, I figured it was about time I dug around the source code to see what I could find.  I decided "charts" would be a good place to start in Google Spreadsheets — and boy did I find them.  Many brand new references to charts were found scattered throughout the source code.

It wouldn't surprise me if a significant upgrade (that includes charts) is rolled out very soon.  You can find references to this coming feature in many of the externally linked files in the source code:

• charts_messages_en.js
• charts.css
• trix_main_messages_en.js
• trix_main.js

Here is a list of chart types that will be the supported according to the "charts_messages_en" file:

_C[12] = ('Pie');
_C[13] = ('Columns');
_C[14] = ('Bars');
_C[15] = ('Lines');

_C[25] = ('Scatter');

More interesting pieces of code suggest that charts will be displayed as "vml" for Internet Explorer and "svg" for other browsers that support it (like Firefox and Opera):

var c=xm(),d=xd[V].indexOf("MSIE")>=0?"vml":"svg";

… 

var e=this.Ib("svg");
e.setAttribute("id","chart");
e.setAttribute("width",a);
e.setAttribute("height",b);
this.F.getElementById("chartArea").appendChild(e);

Until now, the only reference to charts in the source code was an image named "testChart.png" that didn't even actually exist.   I would say this is enough evidence to "get our hopes up".