One thing to note with respect to SVG and Canvas is that these APIs are not nearly as optimized in browsers as HTML is.

Since the web is predominantly HTML, Chrome and other browser devs have focused all their efforts on optimizing it (and JS).

SVG and Canvas rendering has not gotten that kind of attention. However it sounds like they are working on it now.

The upshot is that even if it doesn't seem like it would work today doesn't mean it's dead in the water and we need yet another drawing API. Give it time.

It also means -- and I know this sounds crazy -- that you could try drawing your dots with absolutely positioned 1px by 1px DIVs. I know this sounds absurd but I once worked on a scrolling + scaling timeline widget that performed 10x better when implemented with absolutely positioned HTML DIVs than in SVG.

(And like gruesom noted, it is probably best to blast all your DIVs the DOM in one shot.)