Usually for polls or graphs we use image generated from desktop software or web scripts, and when it come to web it is too much ressource consuming to generate image on the fly. The idea of using CSS to generate Bar Graphs could be very interesting in this case, and Apples to Oranges have a pretty interesting article describing in details how to create Bar Graphs with CSS.
Having a working knowledge of XHTML and CSS when developing applications is a big help in knowing what can be done client-side and what should be generated server-side.
The live demo of the CSS Graphs have been tested with Firefox 1.0.7, Firefox 1.5, IE 6, Safari 1.3.3, and Opera 9(TP1) and this will add a good point to choose CSS for Bar Graphs in addition to ressources consuming for servers. The basic and complex CSS Bar Graph could be used for example for polls but the third vertical Bar Graphs could have a large usage in statistics and so on.
The last graphs could be better if it was more flexible to support any data entry. The bacground image could be standard and the titles in text so it could be 100% client side and used in different graphs while in this case to have it dynamic the bagrkground image need to be generated for every graph.
Anyway it’s a great alternative to design graphs with CSS inspite of images, the technique is very easy to understand and implement. The programming part should be more than easy and the result could be easily changed with CSS.
