Book: Highcharts Essentials
Author: Bilal Shahid
Online: Amazon, Packt Publishing
ISBN-13: 9781783983964
Highcharts Essentials is a short and straightforward book about the Highcharts library, its use and customisation.
Disclaimer: I have received a free digital copy of the book in exchange for writing this review, and although it did not affect my opinion in any way, I’m putting it out there just in case.
Highcharts Essentials (HE) is a very to-the-point book describing Highcharts API and its use, from simple basics to theming, customisation and event handling. It is filled with code examples accompanied by downloadable versions which you can modify for your own endless enjoyment. The actual text describes what the code samples are doing and why.
The writing and explanations are clear, but as it is to be expected from a book like this, very dry. Progression is nicely done, going from the “hello world” equivalent of Highcharts, to exploring API callbacks, processing different input types etc. Examples are provided for most chart types, with frequently used types explored in more detail than the more obscure ones.
You’d probably never guess this from the book’s name, but it is a part of the publisher’s “Essentials” series, described as “Fast paced, concentrated introductions showing the quickest way to put the tool to work in the real world”. Given this as a sort of a “mission statement”, the book delivers what it’s supposed to. All the examples are very clear and easy to follow, the code is readable, and it’s surprisingly clutter free.
So…is this book worth buying?
Right from the start I’ll say that I’m not a big fan of this type of book. From my limited experience, books about software engineering which describe APIs are usually short lived and become obsolete as soon as they are published, especially when dealing with the ever-changing world of open source libraries and frameworks. Of course this isn’t always the case, and even when it is, these books still have value for the novice engineers out there.
Speaking of that, another thing which bugs me with books like this one is the target audience. The examples are simple, and the explanations are simple, and in a lot of cases - too simple. The question that needs to be asked is: What new information am I learning from this book that I can’t learn from reading the official documentation? Until you get to the last few chapters, it looks like the answer is - none. The official documentation offers jsfiddle examples for every option in there, so it’s very easy to try out things and learn as you go. And although the book has a few hidden gems (in terms of explaning some options and their relation to other options), large swaths of content could simply be replaced with the official documentation.
In spite of all this, as mentioned before, in terms of “essentials” this book delivers what it promises. It is a good reference, and the chapters on customisation could prove to be very useful when faced with insane deadlines. Sadly, you won’t learn (m)any super-advanced tricks about the Highcharts API, but for most users - especially novice users - that’s not even necessary. If you don’t like digging through the documentation and instead you like a guiding hand of a tutor, this book is for you.
7.5/10 - Useful as a quick reference, but probably won’t stand the test of time in your non-virtual library.