HTML5 support In Power View and Power BI

Now that Power BI is Generally Available (GA) I thought it would be useful to do a quick analysis of how Power View visualizations are supported in Power BI across the three media – Silverlight (default), HTML5 and Windows 8 App Please find a table below for a quick reference

Feature Silverlight HTML5 Windows 8 App
Background Images

Yes

No

No

Images in Tiles

Yes (but not from external sites)

No

No

Background colors

Yes

No

No

Filters – charts

Yes

Yes

Yes

Filters – dashboard

Yes

Yes

Yes

Maximize Charts

Yes

No

No

Sort charts

Yes

Yes

Yes

Line Charts

Yes

Yes

Yes

Bar Charts

Yes

Yes

Yes

Scatter Plots

Yes

Yes

Yes

Cards

Yes

No

No

Table/Matrix

Yes

Yes

Yes

Matrix with KPI

Yes

Yes

Yes

Drill down on charts

Yes

Yes

Yes

Drill down on matrix

Yes

Yes

No

Scatter Plot (static)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Scatter Plot (with play axis)

Yes

No

No

Tiles

Yes

Yes

No

Maps

Yes

Yes

No

Drill-through

No

No

No

It is easy to see that there is certain parity between features available in HTML5 and Windows 8 app. Also, I just wanted to make a few general observations about the performance. Generally speaking, the fastest chart rendering and drill down experience is available in the Windows 8 app. In most cases, HTML5 version seems to be doing a little better with refreshing charts however, I have found several instances where the Silverlight version of the dashboard ran order of magnitude faster than the HTML5 option. It seems like every week, more and more Silverlight-only features become available on the HTM5 version which seems to lend some support towards the “cloud first” software release strategy from Microsoft.

4 thoughts on “HTML5 support In Power View and Power BI

  1. My PowerView map that works properly in Excel doesn’t render in browser when launched from a Power View Gallery in SharePoint 2013. The tabular data in the document renders fine by Excel Services in browser but the Map tab displays a message about unsupported features that cannot be shown in browser.(“shapes or other objects”). Any suggestions on how to resolve this and get the map to render? Thanks

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