Chart hyperlink rendering problems

jsinai

I need to support interactivity in my charts, and I've added a hyperlink to the value (y) series of a simple bar chart based on Classic Cars. However, I've noticed some pretty severe rendering problems, and I'm wondering if there are any solutions:

To get the hyperlink to show up in firefox on OSX, I found I have to generate SVG. If I generate PNG, the hyperlink will only show up for the first bar.

SVG won't render at all in safari on OSX. If I generate PNG, I get the same behavior as with firefox: the hyperlink will only show up for the first bar.

To get the hyperlink to show up in IE on Windows, I found that PNG works. Also, I can generate SVG, but I have to add the flag &__svg=false to the URL.

Firefox on Windows was pretty bad. If I generate PNG, I get the same behavior as with firefox on OSX: the hyperlink will only show up for the first bar. If I generate SVG, only a portion of the graph renders, even if I change sizes and margins.

So what do birt developers do to deliver charts with interactivity that work cross-browser?

Note: I can't require my users to install an SVG plugin on IE.

Versions used:
Birt: 2.6.1
OSX: 10.6.5
Windows: XP
IE: 8.0
FF (Windows and OSX): 3.6.13
Safari: 5.0.2

I've attached the report design I used for my testing.

Any help is appreciated.
Julian

jsinai

The best compromise I've found so far is to generate PNG and add "&__dpi=300" to the query string. This is not a good solution. BIRT charts are looking pretty dated compared to the graphs of reporting engines like Splunk, Qualys, RSA Archer, etc.