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.
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.
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.