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jacomyal
sigma.js
TypeScript2012–2018
jacomyal / sigma.js

sigma.js

A JavaScript library aimed at visualizing graphs of thousands of nodes and edges

6Distinct people
8Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
12.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A JavaScript library aimed at visualizing graphs of thousands of nodes and edges

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year8 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2012-03-22 23:13:56 UTC to 2018-11-26 15:59:24 UTC.

012342012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20122013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2018

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

8 sources
upvote, because this is the correct answer to the question "how does this work differently from d3," as opposed to the question, "what are the advantages/disadvantages of using this over d3." a quick f12-for-firebug reveals that sigma indeed uses the canvas element. i haven't actually used the library, but it appears ( https://github.com/jacomyal/sigma.js/blob/master/package.jso... ) to in fact be built directly on canvas, which is impressive in some sense but probably does duplicate a lot of work that could be avoided by using a generic-canvas-drawing-but-not-specifically-graph-drawing library. d3 stands for "data-driven-documents" and is actually not specific to graphs. at the core, it's about (as the expanded name suggests) connecting html documents to javascript data structures. of course, lots of libraries -- angular, etc. -- may
Read the rest
be described in such general terms, so more specifically, d3 is useful when you have both a lot of data (or a lot of structure to your data) and a lot of html elements to layout according to that data. it just so happens that <svg> is now actually a tag in html ( : / ? i mean that, the advances in the browsers themselves, was news to me, when i looked at d3 for the first time), so yeah, d3 is most commonly used when the elements you want to lay out are a bunch of svg tags. anyway, i really like d3 (and probably would like three.js, for that matter, if i took the time to toy around with it) b/c i think it does one fairly general thing, does it well, and has practical applications.
In Sigma.js, a JavaScript library dedicated to graph drawing
I am formerly a big fan and user of Gephi, so I think graph drawing is "important enough" to deserve its own JavaScript library, which is why I made sigma.js. I know d3.js is already a great tool, but it looked hardcore for me to tweak it to draw graphs on a Canvas element (it is more easy to use SVG elements). And basically, using a Canvas makes it much more scalable. About the features to come, you can check https://github.com/jacomyal/sigma.js/blob/master/TODO.txt to see what will come soon. Also, of course, don't hesitate to add some ideas you have in that list :)
In Sigma.js: a lightweight JavaScript library to draw graphs

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