In most browsers if you create a HTML5 canvas element in Javascript you get a canvas element with all the needed behaviour. Not of course so in Internet Explorer. If one is being paranoid one would say Microsoft is trying to force everyone to use their nonstandard APIs in the hope of locking people into Microsoft software. But for whatever the reason one needs to add code yet again to make things work on Microsoft.

In Microsoft land one has to call G_vmlCanvasManager.initElement on the new Canvas element to give it the Canvas behaviour. So I'm using code like:

var c = document.createElement( "canvas");
if(typeof G_vmlCanvasManager != 'undefined' )
{
c = G_vmlCanvasManager.initElement(c);
}

To get a canvas element in c.