Personally, I don't think it is. For most use cases, Raphael is a better choice for its browser compatibility (namely IE up to 8) and approachable syntax. Havi

Personally, I don't think it is. For most use cases, Raphael is a better choice for its browser compatibility (namely IE up to 8) and approachable syntax. Having said that, there are times when pure SVG is preferred, such as when JavaScript is not available (although SVG files can contain JS) or when you don't want the processing overhead of a library. For example, SVG is often used to render the UI graphics for navigation menus in TVs which until recently were very low powered. Of course, it's also beneficial (IMO) to have a grasp of how the underlying language works even if you use it through a layer of abstraction. Overall, though, I'd use Raphael unless you have a reason not to. EDIT: I forgot to add that knowledge of SVG is useful for editing images in a text editor, such as when you want fine-grained control or you want to manually remove some of the cruft that graphics software tends to add to files.