CDF plots are great for plotting a single distributions, but contain way too much information if you want to plot 6 distributions next to each other for easy comparison.
Violin plots are interesting but also quite complicated, since you have to arbitrarily choose a kernel shape and this artificial smoothing can make it look like you have much more data than you really do.
I really don't like the author's "alternative designs" because I think they're even more open to misinterpretation than box plots. It's hard to judge though, because the central problem is that the author is trying to represent a bimodal distribution, and shouldn't be using box plots or the 2 "alternative designs" for that.
CDF plots are great for plotting a single distributions, but contain way too much information if you want to plot 6 distributions next to each other for easy comparison.
Violin plots are interesting but also quite complicated, since you have to arbitrarily choose a kernel shape and this artificial smoothing can make it look like you have much more data than you really do.
I really don't like the author's "alternative designs" because I think they're even more open to misinterpretation than box plots. It's hard to judge though, because the central problem is that the author is trying to represent a bimodal distribution, and shouldn't be using box plots or the 2 "alternative designs" for that.