Was there any standardized feature out there that canvas displaced? Heck, given that Flash didn't do generated bitmaps and Java applets were largely dead by the

Was there any standardized feature out there that canvas displaced? Heck, given that Flash didn't do generated bitmaps and Java applets were largely dead by the time canvas hit, was there anything that it displaced? Or even a similar competing feature in another browser? By contrast, Dart is squarely aimed at competing with a feature that's both a defacto and a formalized standard for web browsers. Not an abandoned and aging feature, either: JavaScript's proven far more capable than most of the industry gave it credit for, it's been growing and changing over time, and there's currently very active development, discussion, and collaboration underway to improve the language and its performance -- and expand the features exposed to it by various APIs. There's a world of difference between those two situations. In the former, you're introducing a new feature a platform doesn't have yet. In the later, you're splitting the industry on an existing feature.