Interestingly, when exported to the Web, information graphics go from nonlinear to linear.
Consider "Reconstrucción de la caída de las torres" in El Pais.es. Steve Outing called this "some of the best animated graphics on the Web", with good reason, I think. It is truly elegant. A sober, subdued color scheme, mostly shades of gray. Clear, lucid drawings. Easy navigation tools, exemplarly explained with arrows and text, within the information graphics idiom.
I believe Tufte would approve: Plenty use of scales for comparison. Animation is cleverly used to peel off or glue on layers for explanation and orientatiton. Contrasting colours for clarity. Low data-to-ink ratio, little chartjunk.
But see how sequential: numbered sequence: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Arrows give "back" and "continue". You may jump to a place in the sequence, but only the number will guide you.
In their book Reading Images, Kress and van Leeuwen have the category conceptual images, into which most information graphics will fit. And they note that these images are nonlinear. They are read by scanning, oscillating between overview and detail, viewing the parts' relations to the whole, comparing. This is still very much so in each page of the El Pais installment (which is just an elegant example of a very widespread practise). But we proceed from page to page in a line.
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Gráphicos interactivos
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Dancing Paul