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I want to start a project where I need to draw diagrams consisting of rounded rectangles connected with lines and a JavaScript action when I click some elements. This needs to work in all modern browsers.
Both SVG and HTML5 Canvas seem to be able to do this so I wonder what would be best.
Also I don't want to reinvent the wheel, so if there are libraries that do such things I would like to know; I took a look at Raphaël and some other JavaScript drawing libraries but they don't give all the functionality I need. In Google's API there is such a tool but it is very limited.
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SVG gives better performance with smaller number of objects or larger surface. Canvas gives better performance with smaller surface or larger number of objects. SVG is vector based and composed of shapes. Canvas is raster based and composed of pixel.
Differences Between SVG and Canvas Canvas draws 2D graphics, on the fly (with a JavaScript). SVG is XML based, which means that every element is available within the SVG DOM. You can attach JavaScript event handlers for an element. In SVG, each drawn shape is remembered as an object.
And SVG is faster when rendering really large objects, but slower when rendering many objects. A game would probably be faster in Canvas. A huge map program would probably be faster in SVG.
SVG becomes slow rendering if it is complex because anything that uses the Document object model (DOM) at great extent will become slow. Canvas provides the high-performance element best suited for rendering faster graphics like image editing, an application that requires pixel manipulation.
Use SVG because—as a retained-mode drawing API—you can attach event listeners directly to specific elements, and change properties of specific elements and have the page magically update. Further, as a vector-based format, it is resolution-independent.
HTML5 Canvas, by comparison, is a non-retained-mode (aka immediate-mode) drawing API; every pixel you draw is blended with all other pixels on the canvas, with no concept of the original shape. Further, as a raster-based format, you would need to do some extra work to get the drawing commands to adjust for different display sizes.
In general, you should use Canvas if and only if you need:
Note also that you don't have to choose only one or the other. You can draw SVG onto canvas. You can include bitmaps (images) in SVG. You can even include HTML5 Canvas in SVG via <foreignElement>. You can have a single HTML page with multiple layered canvases and SVG elements with transparent backgrounds, intermingling the output of each.
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