You Want a Fast, Easy-To-Use, and Popular Graph Visualization Tool? Pick Two!

In a bid to create an optimal graph visualization tool, the exploration of various JavaScript libraries revealed key contenders such as VisJS, D3, and SigmaJS, each with distinct advantages and limitations. VisJS, while popular and easy to use, struggles with performance and multithreading, making it unsuitable for large graphs and modern web-worker environments. D3.js stands out for its modularity and extensive documentation, although it requires a significant learning curve and manual handling for graph visualizations. SigmaJS offers impressive speed and performance through WebGL but suffers from limited documentation and reliance on Graphology for graph layout. Despite other notable options like Cosmos and Cytoscape, which either lacked styling capabilities or multithreading support, the decision was made to develop a custom library, Orb, leveraging D3's simulation power and a custom rendering engine derived from Vis, to meet specific styling needs with their Graph Style Script (GSS). This custom solution demonstrated significant performance improvements when integrated into Memgraph Lab v2, achieving faster processing times and providing a more flexible and scalable graph visualization framework.