I am going to recreate a plot that appeared in one of FiveThirtyEight's articles: Comic Books Are Still Made By Men, For Men And About Men. The data are available at Github.

Here is a glimpse of the data that we will use in the next charts:

new_fem_per_year

## # A tibble: 64 x 5
##    comic  year               sex     n share_gender
##    <chr> <int>             <chr> <int>        <dbl>
##  1    DC  1980 Female Characters    10         27.8
##  2    DC  1981 Female Characters    31         26.1
##  3    DC  1982 Female Characters    31         27.9
##  4    DC  1983 Female Characters    53         32.9
##  5    DC  1984 Female Characters    40         28.4
##  6    DC  1985 Female Characters    39         33.9
##  7    DC  1986 Female Characters    37         28.0
##  8    DC  1987 Female Characters    87         34.3
##  9    DC  1988 Female Characters    88         30.8
## 10    DC  1989 Female Characters   103         38.7
## # ... with 54 more rows

hc1 <- hchart(
  new_fem_per_year, 
  "line",
  hcaes(x = year, y = share_gender, group = comic), 
  color = c("#518cca", "#e23636")
  ) %>% 
  hc_title(text = "Comics Aren't Gaining Many Female Characters") %>% 
  hc_subtitle(text = "Percentage of new characters who are female") %>% 
  hc_xAxis(title = list(text = "")) %>% 
  hc_yAxis(
    title  = list(text = ""), 
    labels = list(format = "{value} %")
  ) %>% 
  hc_tooltip(
    pointFormat = "{series.name}: <b>{point.y}</b><br/>", 
    shared = TRUE,
    valueSuffix = " %", 
    crosshairs = TRUE
  ) %>% 
  hc_add_theme(hc_theme_538())

hc2 <- highchart() %>% 
  hc_add_series(
    data = new_fem_per_year, 
    type = "line", 
    hcaes(x = year, y = share_gender, group = comic),
    color = c("#518cca", "#e23636"),
    marker = list(enabled = FALSE) # not needed in hchart()
  ) %>% 
  hc_title(text = "Comics Aren't Gaining Many Female Characters") %>% 
  hc_subtitle(text = "Percentage of new characters who are female") %>% 
  hc_xAxis(title = list(text = "")) %>% 
  hc_yAxis(
    title  = list(text = ""), 
    labels = list(format = "{value} %")
    ) %>% 
  hc_tooltip(
    pointFormat = "{series.name}: <b>{point.y}</b><br/>", 
    shared = TRUE,
    valueSuffix = " %", 
    crosshairs = TRUE
  ) %>% 
  hc_add_theme(hc_theme_538())

• The tooltip is a great way of conveying secondary information in your graphs.
• The function tooltip_table() helps you make quick HTML tables that can be passed to the pointFormat argument of hc_tooltip()

Here is an example of the tooltip I created for the following chart. I named this object tltip

left <- c("heart_eyes", "neutral_face", "sob") %>% map_chr(emo::ji) 
right <- sprintf("{point.%s}", c("JOY", "MEH", "DESPAIR"))

tltip <- tooltip_table(left, right)

hc3 <- hchart(
  candy_feelies, 
  "area", 
  hcaes(x = candy, y = net_feelies),
  threshold = 0,
  color = "orange",
  negativeColor = "black",
  marker = list(enabled = FALSE)
  ) %>% 
  hc_chart(inverted = TRUE) %>% 
  hc_xAxis(
    title = list(text = ""), 
    opposite = TRUE, 
    tickLength = 0
    ) %>% 
  hc_yAxis(
    title = list(text = "Net feelies = Joy - Despair")
    ) %>% 
  hc_tooltip(useHTML = TRUE, pointFormat = tltip) %>% 
  hc_title(text = "Halloween Candy Hierarchy", align = "left") %>% 
  hc_credits(
    enabled = TRUE,
    text = "Source: UBC - THE SCIENCE CREATIVE QUARTERLY", 
    href = "https://www.scq.ubc.ca/so-much-candy-data-seriously/"
  ) %>% 
  hc_add_theme(hc_theme_elementary())

Not automatically possible like in ggplot2, but you can get around it using purrr::map() and hw_grid().

Here's another example using FiveThirtyEight's data.

str(new_char_per_year)

## List of 2
##  $ DC    :Classes 'tbl_df', 'tbl' and 'data.frame':  73 obs. of  5 variables:
##   ..$ comic  : chr [1:73] "DC" "DC" "DC" "DC" ...
##   ..$ year   : Factor w/ 73 levels "1939","1940",..: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ...
##   ..$ n      : int [1:73] 18 64 61 52 14 15 7 9 20 20 ...
##   ..$ couleur: chr [1:73] "#518cca" "#518cca" "#518cca" "#518cca" ...
##   ..$ titre  : chr [1:73] "DC, New Earth continuity" "DC, New Earth continuity" "DC, New Earth continuity" "DC, New Earth continuity" ...
##  $ Marvel:Classes 'tbl_df', 'tbl' and 'data.frame':  73 obs. of  5 variables:
##   ..$ comic  : chr [1:73] "Marvel" "Marvel" "Marvel" "Marvel" ...
##   ..$ year   : Factor w/ 73 levels "1939","1940",..: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ...
##   ..$ n      : int [1:73] 69 221 207 244 198 134 97 90 72 116 ...
##   ..$ couleur: chr [1:73] "#e23636" "#e23636" "#e23636" "#e23636" ...
##   ..$ titre  : chr [1:73] "Marvel, Earth-616 continuity" "Marvel, Earth-616 continuity" "Marvel, Earth-616 continuity" "Marvel, Earth-616 continuity" ...

make_bars <- function(p){
  
  tltip <- tooltip_table("Characters", "{point.n}")
  
  couleur <- unique(p$couleur)
  titre   <- unique(p$titre)
  
  hchart(
    p,
    "column",
    hcaes(x = year, y = n), 
    showInLegend = FALSE, 
    color = couleur
    ) %>% 
    hc_add_theme(hc_theme_538()) %>% 
    hc_yAxis(title = list(text = ""), max = 560) %>% 
    hc_xAxis(title = list(text = "")) %>% 
    hc_title(text = titre) %>% 
    hc_tooltip(useHTML = TRUE, pointFormat = tltip)
}

hc4 <- new_char_per_year %>% 
  map(make_bars) %>% 
  hw_grid(ncol = 2, rowheight = 400) %>% 
  htmltools::browsable()

Official websites:

• Highcharter package
• Highcharts API
  • API Options Reference

Blog posts:

• Joshua Kunst's blog (maintainer of the package)
• Thinking in highcharter: How to build any Highcharts plot in R
• Creating interactive plots with R and Highcharts
• Making a Shiny dashboard with Highcharter

Misc:

• For more on hchart() vs hc_add_series() check out the discussion on issue #302 at Github on Github.
• And on faceting, see discussion here and example here