When comparing Chart.js vs Raphael, the Slant community recommends Chart.js for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript libraries for creating visualisations of data as charts/graphs?” Chart.js is ranked 2nd while Raphael is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Chart.js is:
The library contains a set of 6 charts and is 11Kb gzipped, this makes its loading time and page impact low.
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Pros
Pro Lightweight and fast
The library contains a set of 6 charts and is 11Kb gzipped, this makes its loading time and page impact low.
Pro Responsive charts
The charts are fully responsive, meaning they resize based on the viewport width.
Pro Clear documentation
The chart.js documentation is well organized and provides detailed information on using each feature.
Pro Plugin support
Many plugins available via NPM and you can easily write your own
Pro Works with older browsers
Because Raphael supports rendering VML + SVG, it is one of the few drawing libraries that is backwards compatible with older browsers that do not support canvas.
Pro Built in animations
Several built-in animations (such as ways of easing) are provided for you out of the box, but Raphael also allows cubic beziers for more complicated easing functions. Any drawing object property can be modified making it similar to css animations in jQuery.
Pro Every object is interactive with events
Everything that is drawn in Raphael is an object which means it is easy to manipulate any part of the rendered image after it is processed. It uses an event handler system for user inputs which makes it easy to learn for JavaScript developers used to event based libraries.
This style of handling objects makes Raphael a good fit for rendering interactive diagrams and charts that can also interact with other parts of the page.
Pro Easy creation of charts with extension
gRaphael is a Raphael extension to help you easily create graphs and charts.
Cons
Con Limited features
Chart.js currently offers only 6 graph types, and lacks the flexibility offered by other options. For example, controlling the display of tooltips is fairly limited.
Con Canvas based
Canvas it bitmap based and shares the same issues as non-vector formats.
Con Complicated, confusing documentation
The documentation is often not clear and lacks practical examples.
Con Can be difficult to get support
Online communities for Raphael are small and inactive compared to other drawing libraries, and many issues opened on github are never addressed.