the prefuse visualization toolkit
Prefuse is a set of software tools for creating rich interactive data visualizations. The original prefuse toolkit provides a visualization framework for the Java programming language. The prefuse flare toolkit provides visualization and animation tools for ActionScript and the Adobe Flash Player.
NOTE: Prefuse development has been opened up to the community and the source has moved from SourceForge to a new home on GitHub. Both Prefuse and Flare are now available on GitHub.
Prefuse supports a rich set of features for data modeling, visualization, and interaction. It provides optimized data structures for tables, graphs, and trees, a host of layout and visual encoding techniques, and support for animation, dynamic queries, integrated search, and database connectivity. Prefuse is written in Java, using the Java 2D graphics library, and is easily integrated into Java Swing applications or web applets. Prefuse is licensed under the terms of a BSD license, and can be freely used for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.
The visualization gallery and demonstration video provide numerous examples of the types of applications that can be built with the prefuse toolkit.
To learn more about prefuse, take a look at the user's manual or the frequently asked questions. For users of the alpha version of the toolkit, there is also a porting guide for migrating to the beta version.
Need help? Visit the Help Forum on SourceForge.net (You'll need a SourceForge login to post). Please be sure to include detailed information (e.g., stack traces, source code, etc) if you need debugging help.
If you are interested in tools for ActionScript and Flash, see the prefuse flare project instead.
announcements
2011.11.23: Prefuse development has been opened up to the community and the source has moved from SourceForge to a new home on GitHub. Both Prefuse and Flare are now available on GitHub.
2008.04.02: Our friends at the IBM Visual Communication Lab are using prefuse flare to create visualizations for the Many-Eyes visualization service. Check out their new Comparison Tag Clouds, made with Flare!
2007.10.22: We're happy to announce the first alpha release of prefuse flare, a new prefuse-based visualization library written in ActionScript 3! Flare brings the visualization capabilities of prefuse to the web and runs in the Adobe Flash Player.
2007.06.11: The Toronto Star, Canada's most highly circulated daily, just ran a story on the prefuse-based DocuBurst visualization! Congrats to Chris, the author of DocuBurst! Check out the prefuse gallery for DocuBurst and other great visualization projects.
2007.02.11: A number of new projects have been added to the prefuse gallery. Check them out!
2006.05.18: The prefuse.org website has moved to a new server, with better performance and new features. For example, you can now add comments to pages of the user manual. Apologies to any visitors who have encountered 404 errors by using outdated prefuse.sourceforge.net URLs.
2006.04.16: Prefuse has now surpassed 10,000 downloads! Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the toolkit along the way.
2006.03.03: The prefuse-based Vizster visualization appeared on the CBS crime drama Numb3rs! Watch the video clip (WMV, 4.7M).
releases
2007.10.21: prefuse-beta 2007.10.21 released. See the release notes for more.
2009.01.24: flare-alpha 2009.01.24 has been released. This is a maintenance release with a number of bug fixes and updates. See the release notes for more details. This is the last planned released for Flash Player 9 — future versions will migrate to version 10.
