A few days back, Damien Mulley suggested that somebody build an applet for visualising the changes in Dáil representation of the various parties here in Ireland. I thought it was a neat idea, so I decided to have a go at it when I had some free time.
Behold!
The visualisation is written in Java, so you’ll need to install a copy. If you want the data, feel free to download it.
Drag the slider at the top to move forward and backwards in time, or use the arrow keys. The parties on the top half are the government parties, and the ones below are in opposition.
I’m working on a better version of the graph to the right currently. It’ll have two representations, one listing the parties in alphabetical order, and the other by size (which is how they’re shown right now and how they’re allocated seats in the Dáil itself). I’m also working on a third graph showing the number of seats won and lost between elections, and that will go on below the graphs showing representation.
The representation graphs will also be reworked to render as an arc, which ought to be more space efficient and look better.
The code’s a bit stinky right now, and I’m not happy with the visualisation. But it’s a start, and it works! If anybody’s any suggestions, contact me.
Credit where credit’s due. I’d terrible problems getting it to
appear in IE, but I found
this explanation
of where I was going wrong and of how awful IE’s implementations of the
<object/> and <applet/> tags are.