Basic concepts

Please make sure you understand the basic concepts described in this page before going further.

Chartlet is an add-on that installs on your Firefox browser to capture numeric data out of many places from the Web, and to display timecharts out of these values.

There two ways to use Chartlet. The first usage does not require any special skills nor technical knowledge. It consists in using existing setups, called chartlets, to generate your own charts.

The process for generating a chart takes a few steps:

Install a chartlet into the Chartlet application

This is simply done by clicking on the [Load chartlet] link from one of the chartlet pages.

Create a data channel

Generally, you have to fill-in one or several fields to customize the data you extract. You can create more than one channel if you want to display several series in the same chart.

Wait for data to be extracted

Meaningful charts imply meaningful data to be captured and this may take some time depending on the nature of the values you want to graph. This operation does not require any action from yourself, just that you run Firefox from time to time.

Request the display of the chart

This is done in a few clicks. Although you can customize the display, the defaults are generally satisfying. You can see the chart with the latest data at any time and if you want to, publish it so that everyone can see it.

Please follow this tutorial for details about the basic usage of Chartlet.

The second usage of Chartlet is for users with some basic knowledge of the Web technologies. It then becomes possible to create your own setup to extract data from sites for which no chartlet exists yet. Resulting chartlets can easily be shared for everyone to use them. Follow this guide for details about how to create your own chartlets.