Browser-based applications sometimes feel clunky compared to their standalone counterparts due to a lack of interactivity and graphical richness. Until recently, interactive graphics in the browser meant resorting to plugins like Flash or Java applets.

Now, however, newer versions of all the popular web browsers support at least one method of drawing client-side graphics via JavaScript and the DOM. This session covers the advantages, disadvantages, and availability of each technique. We then show strategies for creating a uniform JavaScript graphics library that works in all browsers, and a hybrid Ajax approach that performs additional graphics processing on the server.

Specific technologies discussed will include the <canvas> tag, Direct Animation and Vector Markup Language (VML) in Internet Explorer, server-side graphics with the GD library, and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).