DEV Community: Omar Urbano

Announcing LightningChart for Python 2.2 - Plotting library

Omar Urbano — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:29:01 +0000

We're announcing LightningChart Python 2.2, introducing better UI controls and interaction features for building responsive dashboards. Here are the updates:

New UI elements

Full cursor customization supporting control behavior, style, and create manual cursors.

Pointable TextBox

Added interactive callout annotations with built-in directional pointers. PointableTextBox extends the standard TextBox with arrow/pointer functionality, perfect for highlighting specific data points, creating tooltips, or adding explanatory annotations that visually connect to chart elements.

CheckBox

Add persistent, toggleable UI switches directly on charts and dashboards. CheckBox keeps its on/off state after click, supports text, styling, background, and pointer events, and is ideal for options like “Show grid” or “Enable cursor.”

ButtonBox

Add momentary action buttons with automatic bounce‑back behavior. ButtonBox uses the same API and styling as CheckBox, but it resets to “off” after each press. That makes it perfect for one‑shot actions like “Reset view” or “Apply filter.”

Get started

LightningChart Python offers more control, better interactivity, and easier building and managing advanced dashboards.

LightningChart Python v2.2

Announcing LightningChart .NET 12.5.1

Omar Urbano — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:52:36 +0000

In this release, we focused on improving current features, including LegendBox and PrintPreview, adding new properties to ViewXY, improving .NET Trader’s behavior, and more.

Read the full release note

LegendBox

We are introducing a refined LegendBox rendering that harmonizes all XY, 3D, Polar, Pie3D, and Smith views. We have added new features for LegendBox, including the new VerticalTitlesGap property to control the minimum gap between titles. Furthermore, LegendBox now supports titles with multiple lines, and the mouse events over the LegendBox have more detailed information.

Below is an example of LegendBoxes with multiple line titles, and a normal versus a reduced vertical gap.

Printing and PrintPreview

Now in WinForms, the PrintPreview dialog is available in several languages, including English, German, and Finnish. We have also slightly changed the printing dialogue UI, and users can now control which items to show and which default values are set. Below is an example of the improved PrintPreview dialog window:

ViewXY: new AutoPadding property

We are introducing the new AutoPadding property for ViewXY, which is the padding for PXs that controls edges, such as outer edges or the rim of a chart, which encloses ViewXY margins.

AutoPadding can be used when Margins are auto-adjusted (AxisLayout.AutoAdjustMargins is enabled). Chart objects like Annotations and LegendBoxes can be placed in the padded area. AutoPadding is a padding structure in WinForms and a thickness structure in WPF. Below is a simple ViewXY.AutoPadding example where the padded area is pseudo-colored differently (in grey) for clarity (with Annotation help).

Other improvements

Improved .NET Trader behavior: Band’s border now has an inner, outer, and none BorderType property
Added support for 24-bit and 32-bit WAV audio files
Improved handling of D3DImage failure

Get Started with LightningChart .NET

Announcing Dashtera: a powerful dashboarding platform

Omar Urbano — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:30:00 +0000

We're excited to announce the official release of Dashtera®: a no-code, cloud-based data visualization platform powered by the LightningChart engine, built for high-performance, real-time analytics.

With full GPU acceleration at its core, Dashtera enables teams to explore, analyze, and share large volumes of data with exceptional speed and responsiveness. Whether working with live data streams or large historical datasets, the platform delivers scalable, interactive dashboards without requiring any coding.

What’s New

Since the Beta release, Dashtera has introduced several features that enhance how users shape and interact with their data:

KPI Panels – Quickly highlight the most important metrics in a clear, compact format, helping users understand performance at a glance without navigating multiple charts.

Expanded Data Connectors – Simplified integration with a wide range of data sources, including WebSocket, Redis, Cassandra, Trino, Snowflake, MongoDB, MariaDB, MS SQL Server, InfluxDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.

Advanced Dashboards

To demonstrate its capabilities, Dashtera includes advanced dashboard examples such as a Concrete Compressive Strength Analysis. This showcases how users can explore relationships between variables, analyze patterns, and extract insights from complex datasets, all without writing code.

Interact with this example

Get Started

Dashtera offers a Free plan to get started, along with Business Intelligence, Engineering and Science, and Finance and Trading plans for more advanced use cases. It is designed to provide the performance, flexibility, and clarity needed to turn complex data into actionable insights.

Dashtera - Powerful Data Visualization And Dashboarding Platform

Build stunning dashboards with Dashtera. Upload Excel data files, and connect to databases and real-time data streams. Handle millions of data points with 3D charts, maps and ML models. Deploy on cloud, on-premises, or as OEM.

dashtera.com

Announcing LightningChart JS 8.2: a more powerful JS charting library

Omar Urbano — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 12:00:40 +0000

What is LightningChart JS?

LightningChart JS is a data visualization library for building high-end JavaScript charting applications in complex scenarios that demand processing data at high performance. This new version 8.2 introduces new features that improve how developers and users interact with the library.

Introducing Linear Gauge Charts

This new linear gauge chart type supports real-time data updates, interpolated and non-interpolated color steps, vertical and horizontal alignments, with the ability to display current values, and custom icons.

Render transformations for XY series

LightningChart JS 8.2 introduces a new API that allows arbitrary affine transformations for XY series. What this means is that the user application code can freely transform already existing data by offsetting and/or scaling it.

This operation is extremely efficient and does not require any re-preparation of data. Arbitrary affine transformations are useful for cases like oscilloscopes.

lineSeries.setRenderTransform({
    x: { offset: 0, scaling: 1 },
    y: { offset: 100, scaling: 10 }
})

API for custom tick placement

This feature allows the user to take full control of where the axis ticks are placed within the chart. This API also allows specifying tick positions separately between major & minor tick levels.

axis.setTickStrategy(AxisTickStrategies.Numeric, (strategy) => strategy
    .setCustomTickPlacement((info) => [
        { position: 0 },
        { position: 1000 },
        { position: 2000 },
    ])
)

Introducing LLM training documentation

LightningChart JS 8.2 paid special attention to training reference materials for AI and LLMs. We have seen how LLMs are trying to find their place in software development. However, LLMs are inherently poor at working with specific 3rd party libraries, such as LightningChart JS, because their training data is a mix of new and old versions, and they tend to mix APIs from different libraries. For this purpose, we now manage agent-ready references for using LightningChart JS.

How to use?

Simply load our LLM-optimized documentation files to your project and add a single prompt rule for your agents:

You MUST always use the local files lcjs-docs-llms.txt 
and lcjs-api-llms.txt 
as the only sources of truth for all matters regarding how to use
LightningChart JS library / lcjs

We tested this approach with Claude code (Opus 4.5, Sonnet 4.5). To download these files and read about the latest tips on how to use LightningChart JS with LLMs, visit our dedicated LC JS – AI documentation.

New Chart Examples

In this release, we introduce new chart examples for you to try online:

Scrolling Heatmap Aggregation

JavaScript 3D Slicer

Air Quality Route Visualization Dashboard

Parallel Coordinate Chart Dashboard

Linear Gauge Chart within a Dashboard

Linear Gauge Chart

Get started with LightningChart JS v8.2 today.

Read the full release note

Written by:
Omar Urbano | Software Engineer & Technical Writer
Send me your questions via LinkedIn

New release: LightningChart Python 2.1

Omar Urbano — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 07:20:39 +0000

LightningChart Python is a GPU-accelerated and WebGL-rendered plotting library for Python that introduces version 2.1, with important new features that will enhance your Python applications. Here's a summary:

Introducing DataGrid

Introducing a new high-performance DataGrid component to present metrics, KPIs, and mini-trends right inside a grid.

Container

This new version introduces the Container feature that enables scrollable multi-chart layouts with custom dimensions.

LegendPanel

The Legend Panel feature allows you to create dedicated legend areas inside dashboards and containers, push entries from series, add text boxes, and control visuals.

Other features & improvements

Heatmap min-max aggregation
Heatmap/3D Surface contours
New event listener methods
New TranslateCoordinate system
Drill-down method for TreeMap charts

For more information, read the full release note.

Get started

LightningChart Python offers a completely free community edition, including the latest features.

Download community edition

Releasing LightningChart Python Trader 1.1

Omar Urbano — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 12:23:13 +0000

In this version, LightningChart Python Trader introduces different features including drawing tool pointer events, chart-level pointer events, and value label controls. For more information, read the full release note.

Drawing Tool Pointer Events

Pointer events are signals that let you interact with and modify the drawing tools on a chart. LightningChart Python Trader introduces new comprehensive events allowing for custom interactions and dynamic chart updates. The new events are:

on_pointer_down(): Triggered when clicking on a drawing tool
on_pointer_up(): Triggered when releasing the mouse button
on_pointer_enter(): Triggered when the cursor enters the tool area
on_pointer_leave(): Triggered when the cursor exits the tool area
on_drawing_tool_moved(): Triggered when the tool position changes

Chart-Level Pointer Events

Similar to drawing tool events, this release introduces pointer events at the chart level:

on_pointer_down(): Triggered when clicking on a drawing tool
on_pointer_up(): Triggered when releasing the mouse button
on_pointer_move(): Triggered when the cursor moves

Value Label Controls

Value label controls allow customizing how the latest price and indicator values are displayed. The new available controls are:

show_value_labels(bool): Show/hide all value labels
set_latest_value_label_type(str): Control the latest price label display

New Visual Customization Methods

We have introduced new styling methods to provide greater control over how the chart looks.

Get Started with LightningChart Python Trader

LightningChart Python Trader is the most complete Python Library for visualizing financial data and creating Fintech applications.

Request 7-day free trial

Announcing LightningChart JS Trader v4.0

Omar Urbano — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 08:45:41 +0000

Hey, I'm Omar, and this time I wanted to bring you some good news about the latest release of LightningChart JS Trader 4.0.

In this release, we focused on improving the user experience, flexibility, and real-time data streaming. Here are some of the changes:

LightningChart JS Trader 4.0: high-precision JS library for developing Fintech applications

Latest Price Labels

Built-in labels now show the latest close and indicator values, with options to show/hide the label and horizontal line.

Drawing Tool Events

New pointer events (PointerDown, PointerUp, PointerEnter, PointerLeave) enable richer interactions. Default drawing-tool menus can also be disabled for custom implementations.

Real-Time Improvements

Zooming/panning now work properly during real-time updates.
New data point limit feature (enableDataPointLimit(), setDataPointLimit()).
X-axis flicker fixed; better performance and more accurate labels.
Automatic Data Sorting: Data no longer needs to be added in chronological order; the chart now sorts data automatically by datetime.

Splitter Line Colors

New method to customize splitter line colors between main chart and indicators.

Get Started with LightningChart JS Trader

Access the latest version with a 30-day free trial. Or read the official release note.

Written by:
Omar Urbano| Software Engineer & Technical Writer
Send me your questions via LinkedIn

Announcing LightningChart JS 8.1

Omar Urbano — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 08:58:39 +0000

LightningChart JS is a GPU-accelerated and WebGL-rendered charting library for creating JavaScript data-intensive applications. LightningChart JS features an extensive library of 2D & 3D charts:

Line charts
Heatmaps
Mesh models
Medical charts
DataGrids
Statistic charts and more

In this new release, LightningChart JS 8.1 introduces new features, performance improvements, and developer experience upgrades. Here are the highlights:

Heatmap & Surface Contours
Built-in contour rendering with customizable styles.

Heatmap Min–Max Aggregation
Ensures peak values stay visible even when zoomed out. The aggregation can be set with heatmapSeries.setAggregation(‘max’).

3D LineSeries Value Coloring
Color segments dynamically based on data values.

Inset Custom Ticks
Align custom tick labels inside the chart area.

Custom Cursor Styles
Define or disable cursors for built-in interactions.

Performance Improvements

Rectangle Series
Progressive cursor behavior for histograms and multi-series charts.

Heatmap Flat Array Input: Supports flat and Typed Arrays for faster data loading and lower memory use.

Get started with LightningChart JS v8.1 today.

Read the full release LightningChart JS 8.1 note.

Written by:
Omar Urbano | Software Engineer & Technical Writer
Send me your questions via LinkedIn

Releasing LightningChart .NET 12.4.1

Omar Urbano — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 09:49:13 +0000

The LightningChart® v12.4 release delivers major updates across both core charting components and the .NET TradingChart module, focusing on usability, flexibility, and performance.

DataCursor & ResultTable

Customizable ResultTable content – The DataCursor.ChangeResultContent event allows developers to define custom table formats using composite format strings.

Supported in XY, 3D, Polar, and Smith views, enabling control over displayed values, precision, and layout.

Custom Messages

New CustomMessage property for displaying user-defined messages in the chart’s top-left corner.

Fully customizable through CustomMessageOptions (colors, fonts, offsets).

Option to forward internal LightningChart messages to this area.

TradingChart for .NET

Completely redesigned user interface – all indicators, tools, and chart-type options now accessible via a left-side toolbar.
Added support for multiple color themes.
End value labels show the latest price and indicator readings.
Nested indicators – indicators can now be based on each other or on different OHLC fields.
Enhanced data cursor automatically detects data precision.
Various drawing tool improvements and bug fixes for a smoother experience.

Releasing LightningChart .NET 12.4.1

Full release note

Announcing LC Python Trader: best Python financial data visualization library

Omar Urbano — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 07:11:58 +0000

Hello again, I'm delighted to introduce LightningChart Python Trader, the most complete Python data visualization library for visualizing financial data.

If you've read any of my articles, you've seen that I mostly create JS and .NET projects. But this time, we're introducing LightningChart Trader for Python.

This is a solution that compiles the most advanced features for visualizing financial and trading data. Here is the summary of the release:

Technical Indicators

LightningChart Python Trader features more than 100 technical indicators. Some of the technical indicator types included are:

Envelopes: Bollinger Band, Donchian Channels, Fractal Chaos Bands…
Moving Averages: EMA, SMA, TMA…
Oscillators – Money Flow: A/D, Chaikin Money Flow, Ease of Movement…
Oscillators – Price: Aroon Oscillator, Awesome Oscillator, Balance of Power…
Statistics: Correlation coefficient, Kurtosis, Median Price…
Trend Indicators: ASI, ADX, Aroon
Volatility: Average True Range, Chaikin Volatility, Z-Value…

Dashboards

LightningChart Python Trader introduces the dashboard feature, allowing users to add multiple charts in fully customizable layouts. It is possible to create custom workspaces with different chart types, timeframes, and indicators in the same view.

Technical Analysis Chart (TAChart) Constructor

When creating a new chart, it is possible to define values for theme, load_from_store, axis position, and HTML text rendering. There are also helper methods available, including set_dat, add_data_array, and load_csv, now supporting unsorted datasets.

trader = TAChart(
    license_key,
    html_text_rendering=True,
    load_from_storage=False,
    theme='turquoiseHexagon',
    axis_on_right=True
)

Menu Options Control

LightningChart Python introduces 41 new menu_options()to show/hide UI elements. This is helpful to build custom data visualization interfaces and simpler experiences.

menu = trader.menu_options()

menu.show_chart_title_input(False)
menu.show_currency_input(False)
menu.show_watermark_text_input(False)

Mountain Gradients

LightningChart Python 1.0 introduces better gradient options to different chart types, including mountain charts.

Get Started

LightningChart Python is available for a free trial. You may also read the full release note.

Request 7-day free trial

Release day: LightningChart JS 8.0 is out now

Omar Urbano — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:40:13 +0000

Hello,

Here's a quick post about LightningChart JS's new release v.8.0.

What is LightningChart JS?

LightningChart JS is a data visualization library for building high-end JavaScript charting applications in complex scenarios that demand processing data at high performance.

Introducing LightningChart JS 8.0

In LightningChart JS 8.0, we focus on developing new features, and adding visual quality, performance, and developer experience improvements. You can read the full release note or check out the most important here:

Completely reworked legends
This update improves chart appearance by making legends adapt to available space and simplifies configuration with a more powerful API.

New features include:

Legends are now moved away from obstructing the visualizations and adapt to the available space.
New legends now appear automatically below trends.
You can manually create multiple legends.
An easier-to-learn and use API configuration.
More use cases with built-in functionalities.
Adding plugin support for the custom legend functionality.
Legends support built-in or custom position options.
You can define legend click behavior using built-in or custom options.
It's possible to exclude specific series from legends when creating them.

Cursor point marker changes

This version introduces Cursor point marker changes. We have changed the default style for the cursor point marker to a transparent circle which improves how the data value is highlighted.

Improved Cursor Fitting for Small Charts

Cursor fitting has been improved for use cases with small charts. We’ve added more built-in logic to prevent situations where cursor content is not visible due to little available space.

DataSetXY Rework

This version introduces several performance improvements that can be accessed by using the DataSetXY functionalities:

Shared timestamps can reduce chart memory consumption by up to 2x.
Separate data storage format configurations can further decrease memory consumption if some measurements do not require full 64-bit precision.
Data mapping can massively speed up switching displayed channels and improve memory efficiency.

Outstanding Performance Results

We conducted a performance gain test on the Multi-Channel EEG chart example, and in a multi-channel EEG shared timestamp test case, we successfully loaded data sets 8 times larger than before.

In this test, we reached an incredible 8,000,000,000 data points. This is an unprecedented achievement in web data visualization.

Beyond the previously mentioned improvements, v8 also delivers additional out-of-the-box performance enhancements:

Real-time streaming line series CPU usage has been reduced by approximately 63%.
Real-time streaming scatter series CPU usage has been reduced by approximately 245%.

Get access to LightningChart JS 8.0

LC JS 8.0 introduces several improvements for a better development and user experience.

Read the full release note

Announcing Dashtera: a revolutionary dashboarding platform

Omar Urbano — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 10:22:38 +0000

Hello! I'm Omar, and this time I bring you good news about LightningChart's latest product release: Dashtera.

Introducing the Dashtera Beta platform

Dashtera is the next-generation web platform for building high-performance, real-time dashboards, now launched in beta. Dashtera has been built on cutting-edge LightningChart technology, empowering users to explore, analyze, and share data faster than ever before.

Whether you’re monitoring live data feeds or creating interactive reports, Dashtera delivers the speed, clarity, and flexibility needed to turn data into action, no code needed.

Dashtera’s benefits

Dashtera is designed for professionals in any industry who demand performance without compromising usability. Some of the Dashtera’s benefits include:

Ultra-high-performance dashboards with real-time updates and smooth UI interactions
Stunning visuals and color themes to help your data stand out and tell a clear story
Effortless data connections to SQL databases, real-time streams, or local files, and more
Industry-grade observability to visualize hundreds of data feeds with millisecond-level resolution
2D and 3D charting powered by WebGL technology and optimized for massive datasets
Secure dashboard sharing with public or internal viewing modes

Multiple data sources and connectors

Dashtera can seamlessly connect to databases supporting PostgreSQL, MySQL, InfluxDB, MS SQL Server, MariaDB, and several more to come.

Dashboard Editor

An intuitive interface for building and customizing dashboards quickly.

Visualizations

Dashtera features a wide range of high-performance visualizations, including:

basic charts
XY Charts
Bar Charts
3D Charts
Polar Charts
Technical Analysis Charts
Statistics Charts
Maps

Dashtera also provides users with:

drill-down
drill-through
data filtering
grouping
aggregation
custom functions

Reporting and Sharing

PDF Reporting
Easily export dashboards to PDF format for streamlined sharing and documentation.

Sharing Options
Securely share dashboards within your team or make them publicly accessible for external audiences.

Get access to Dashtera Beta

Dashtera Beta is available for free, featuring all advanced features. Discover a new way of creating dashboards and visualizing your data.

Try Dashtera for free