Introduction

yFiles for HTML is an extensive class library that provides algorithms and components for analyzing, viewing, editing, and drawing graph and network diagrams. You can use it to develop sophisticated web applications for modern browsers and platforms.

Graphs and networks commonly consist of entities and their relationships. Presenting such data as a diagram is beneficial because it visualizes complex structures and relationships. Diagrams facilitate communication of information by providing a clear picture of the data. However, creating, maintaining, and presenting diagrams are complex tasks that include:

• the visualization of entities, relations, and labels
• a meaningful arrangement of all elements
• interactive editing of the diagram
• persistence

yFiles for HTML provides features to facilitate these tasks.

This introduction provides an overview of the purposes of the yFiles for HTML library and typical applications and application domains. Finally, it provides an outlook of the contents of this Developer’s Guide.

To quickly learn the basic concepts of yFiles for HTML, you can follow the steps in the Getting Started chapter.