Functions now behave synchronously
However, in order to accomplish this the functions needed to be written
directly using the Javascript DOM API, not using jQuery or D3JS. This is
because jQuery and D3 are incapable of performing cross-domain GET
requests synchronously.

This normally wouldn't be a problem, but in this case the synchronous
behaviour was desired to make the demo work more appropriately.
Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/removing-async-force-graph'

Adds synchronous behaviour to the forceLayout demo for the progress
report presentation.