Interactive Stock Charts

106 interactive stock charts

Also known as dynamic stock charts, interactive stock charts are rapidly replacing traditional static stock charts on many financial information websites.

The main advantage of interactive stock charts is that they are ... well ... they are interactive. That means they allow you, the user, to make changes in the way the numbers are presented, how they are scaled, what colors are used and, in general, do all the things you could do if you were creating the charts yourself using a chart making software application or, for that matter, a set of colored pencils and a sheet of graph paper.

Essentially an interactive stock chart allows you to customize the chart in question to deliver exactly what you would like it to deliver in precisely the way you would most like to receive that delivery. A static chart, in contrast, forces you to take or leave whatever the chart maker wants to give you in whatever form he or she decides to supply it in.

Interactive stock charts are usually empowered by Sun Microsystems Java Technology, a computer programming language that allows application designers to, among other things, apply a myriad of multimedia enhancements to World Wide Web content with a reasonable expectation that they will run correctly on virtually any Web browser running under any common 32-bit or 64-bit computer operating system.

There is one exception to this and that revolves around the fact that not all browser developers bundle what is called a Java virtual machine, the software code that enables the browser to read and display Java content, as a native feature of their browser. The Opera Web browser, for example, can be downloaded either with or without Java depending on user preference. (Browsers without Java tend to be more compact, use fewer computer resources and run slightly faster than those with Java.)

So if you try to access an interactive stock chart and get a message saying you need to download the Java plugin to get it, go ahead and press the download button. Java is not a virus or a trojan, it is a legitimate -- actually an essential -- component of the modern Web and, as of 2008, more than 97 percent of the world's browsers were Java enabled.