[felxh]

I can't speak for others, but if you write browser apps/websites for a generic audience you basically have no choice. The reason consist of two letters: IE

[throwaway_yy2Di]

But IE didn't support SVG either until recently? If I read right, it was supported since the same version as HTML5 canvas (IE 9),

http://caniuse.com/#cats=SVG

http://caniuse.com/canvas

[timmclean]

Tools like http://raphaeljs.com/ allow you to support older versions of IE.

[vidarh]

But likewise you can use excanvas.js to let your canvas code run on IE (emulates it using VML)

[felxh]

It is true, you can probably stop supporting IE8 depending on your audience.

[UPDATE: also I was reading SVG/DOM as an or]