Very good introduction. I read this in conjunction with the MOOC Murray co-taught with Alberto Cairo. But this is very basic. You'll need more practice and reading. But this will get you started. ( )

Just like the title says, this is a very thorough introduction to using D3 for interactive data vis. Certainly enough to get one started, though beware, this edition assumes v4 while current (2019) is v5. The dedicated github repo has all the errata and code corrections, though not the v5 updates, which are, however discussed in various bug reports. The early chapters go over almost all the code line-by-line. The later chapters require close reading of the code in addition to the text. I found meld to be an invaluable tool for comparing versions side by side. ( )

A nice and short introduction to designing interactive data visualisations using the D3 JavaScript library.

I liked the style of the book as it is concise, witty and where relevant plenty of links and references are provided for further exploration beyond the book. Although it is meant for people who have no experience with web development and code and introduces concepts such as HTML, CSS and JavaScripts before diving into D3, I would say that in order to get the most out of it the reader would need to already be at least a little familiar with these basics before beginning with the book, since I feel that with no prior web development experience grasping D3 using this book would prove challenging.

D3 offers many possibilities for data visualisation and rather than covering all the possible approaches, the book focuses on providing the basics so the reader can go away and explore further on their own.

In my opinion the use of colour really improves the ability to process information in the book (both in the visualisations and the code), and I would like to see it used more often in books on programming.

Note: the complete book is also available online free of charge. ( )

The book gives a shallow overview of D3.

I did not like the book, since it is written more for web-designers (as the author says himself; dammit, I could have known it before...) and thus tries to skip the underlying principles. This is despite the fact that D3 is actually a really sophisticated piece of code and I wonder what anyone with little programming experience can make of D3 anyway.

Without the tutorials on the D3-website it would have been impossible for me to wrap my head around D3.

At least it makes for a quick read. ( )