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I don't think Google Chartserver offered SVG, though, did it?

I think that's a significant difference, in that the <object> variant of this API has the potential for access to the chart elements for styling and interactivity.

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Well Chartserver did offer SVG at one point, although at the time SVG was (and kinda still is) under supported in the browser space AFAICT.

Having recently rediscovered the non-joy of putting somebody else's javascript on a page (in that case WebRing) I am a bit gun shy of the whole model[0].

I really like the idea of 'server driven charts' for easy web pages and illustration. But I would rather have it be something I could put on an Raspberry Pi in my network so that I didn't have to worry either about the privacy issues or it going away (as Chartserver has been trying to do :-).

[0] Imagine what will happen if placekitten.com gets sold to some porn aggregator.

That's an interesting comment - we're building a SaaS 'point and click' style D3-based chart designer (http://chartblocks.com) but hadn't really given much thought so far to people that prefer to self host.

But that way you are throwing away the only benefit - that it works without javascript. It's really expensive to draw graphs and it's better to be offloaded to clients.

I can't think of many reasons for building them serverwise.. except for when you don't have access to javascript or you are limited by the power as well.

I disagree, as even if you did use Javascript the service is still far more accessible to a novice developer than something like the d3.js library (which I love, but has a rather steep learning curve).

Additionally, you would be surprised at how much could be accomplished in that department with just CSS.

That's a limitation of d3.js, not JavaScript. gRaphaël is pretty easy to use: http://g.raphaeljs.com/

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