Which would you prefer? SVG, HTML5 or regen'd-PNG for graphs & charts?

Question

I'm developing a new site that graphs some operational metrics. As such about a dozen charts/graphs will be displayed on the site. I want to be able to have them dynamically scale down (within reason) based upon the size of the browser.

I'm debating the pros/cons of generating these as one of these options:

1. SVG. Great for scaling but support may have limited support,
2. HTML5. Clearly a great choice for the future and for FF customers, IE?
3. PNG. This would require that I regenerate the PNG based upon the size of the DIV &c.

Which is the preferable option? I'm leaning towards PNG just for ubiquitous support, but would like to have client-side scaling. What is the best solution given the state of affairs of SVG and HTML5 canvas support in browsers?

Answer 1

The best option would be SVG or HTML5 that will fall back on PNG if the others aren't available.

Answer 2

ExplorerCanvas brings <canvas> support to IE. So, it would be an amalgamation of 1 & 2. The benefit would be that (a) as more browsers add support for <canvas>, you would automatically get the benefits of already supporting it and (b) you would get scaling with browser size.

Answer 3

Now you can use SVG anywhere

Answer 4

SVG is supported by all modern browsers. Canvas is supported by all modern browser. Internet Explorer supports neither. A partial API for SVG, with fallback mechanism for IE exists in Raphaël (raphaeljs.com) A partial Canvas-implementation for IE exists in ExCanvas

I'd say say its not a question of "Canvas or SVG", but what high-level library exists that best covers your needs.

Answer 5

You could do worse than explore a new charting library: http://g.raphaeljs.com/

You won't believe it at first.

Answer 6

I prefer SVG over HTML5 canvas or PNG for charts. Canvas and PNG zoom as bitmaps in Firefox. (Canvas provides a vector API, but it's a drawable bitmaps surface--not a vector store.) SVG zooms as vector graphics in Firefox.

I ofter run with the view zoomed, so I appreciate real vector zooming.

(Canvas makes sense for games that can't handle the perf hit of retained mode graphics.)