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Finally, SVG support in browsers sucks complete ass. ... Add animation or interactivity too it and you are in for a freaking world of pain.

Eh, it's not that bad for interactivity. Simple things like the FindTheCountry interactive geography quiz done entirely in one SVG file, and interactive map layers work in all good (non-IE) browsers. Animation through SMIL support seems pretty limited, but nowadays people are more likely to modify the SVG directly using DOM calls.

The <canvas> tag gets all the attention and awesome demos, but now there are JavaScript libraries like the Burst framework that can read in SVG elements and render and animate them. So an artist can create and name all the graphic assets in an SVG file, then a programmer pulls them out as needed.

Inkscape's fine for static SVG editing, but there are no good authoring tools for these animation and interactivity tricks. Furthermore many SVG demos on the web still use deprecated syntax to load SVG files.

What are Mozilla's intentions now with respect to SVG? One can not ignore that the specification of SVG with respect to Adobe's Flash product. To my thinking, SVG, or its spawn, is the direction of future web developement.

The Adobe test seems to be doing something freaking with JS... try:

http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/samples/shapes.sht ml

for a nice simple example. Googling for "SVG example" is also a good start. Strangely, can't get any of the examples from carto.net that use JS to work...

fix the typo of programming to programmer... and here is a nice link to show an example of its power..

yosemite (plugin required. i think its built into IE though)

http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/samples/text.shtml

I also am very much afraid that Adobe will drop SVG support. It has been years since there was an official upgrade to the 3.0 plugin. Even 6.0alpha has been around for some time now and I guess it will take time before we will see a full native SVG implementation in Moz/Firefox :(

Why SVG?
(1) http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/comparison_flash_s vg/

(2) SVG is about interactive rich media presentations, Flash is about Art ... (Parisi in Visualizing Information Using SVG and X3D -
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1852 337907/

Time to move to an open standard like svg (Scalable Vector Graphics)!

It's just as good if not better . And it's not a proprietary standard- just embed it in the dang browser and be done with it, no plugin messiness.

(1) While I agree with some
posters that there is a danger of distributing unfinishend
implementations, having a NATIVE SVG is a real breakthrough though.
Quote: "Mozilla can handle documents that contain SVG, MathML, XHTML,
SMIL, etc. all mixed together in the same 'compound' document.... ".
Means for instance that you can simply add a little vector graphic INTO
your XHTML code instead of importing png. Also means that the same
DOM/Ecma interface can be used to program dynamic websites, or that you
can dynamically transform XML contents into XHTML/SVG with XSLT
client-side on the fly...

(2) On another note: Adobe's Plug-in version 6.0 BETA is available. And
it does not crash Mozilla 1.4 (Win2k) when embedded in HTML. In order
to install it with Mozilla (tested with Moz 1.4/Win2k) you must copy
the 2 files from:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\SVG Viewer 6.0\Plugins\*
to c:\Program Files\Mozilla.org\Mozilla\Plugins\ Did not see any Unix
version :(

http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/beta.html

PS: Plugin v3.0 kills Moz 1.4 (and others if you don't use iframes)

(3) There are some really cool SVG sites. My favorites:

http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/
(cool examples)

http://www.protocol7.com/svg-wiki/
(documentation about obscuret extensions,
i.e. shows how to get/post to URLS from within SVG ...)
- K

Two important differences between Flash and SVG related to internet-based vector-generated applications

SVG-based systems can be delivered using server with programs written in any language. Currently, you can deliver SVG web applications from Linux, Solaris, and Windows using SVG.pm module, C#, php, python, ASP, and Java through the Apache Batik. There is more info on these on the SVG wiki.
With Flash MX, you are currently limited to Windows servers. This means that you are forced to buy your entire server supply chain from monopolies. This is a Very Bad Thing.

SVG-based systems can be rendered by any internet-capable application. There are over a dozen independant rendering applications available free of charge, covering most operating systems.The Flash 6 viewer can only be downloaded for Windows, and is limited to desktop computers. It is fairly well known that the PC market is down and the bulk of growth on the web will be in portable applications (handhelds, phones, etc). In this market, there is *no* Flash player that I know of. This means that if you build a flash-based app for your windows visitors, you will need to spend that much money again building something for non-PC users.

There are more objective comparisons between SVG and Flash at carto.net.

--Hackmare
Perl SVG.pm evangelist
http://www.roasp.com/

I think SVG is the technology for the future.
Already open source project such as sodipodi is using SVG to store vector graphic format.

Here are some more information about SVG and comparsion with SWF:

Mozilla SVG Project
Comparing .SWF (Shockwave Flash) and .SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) file format specifications
Flash and SVG

Here's a great page that compares SVG vs. Flash.

Here's two good reasons why you want to implement SVG instead of Flash:

SVG is a standard, Flash is proprietary.
SVG can be indexed and searched, Flash can't.

Despite what Macromedia want you to believe, SWF is hidden with proprietary extensions, just like the good old M$ Office documents. See the comparison and decide for yourself. Besides, just because the file format is open doesn't mean the underlying technology is not based on patents that will hit you badly when you try to make a free Flash player. If you are using SWF, you will just be sucked into another animated GIF trap.

I program a generator for Flash files. Flash is featurewise superior, but the performance isn't. Read this well-known comparison.

Flash is also a fairly open standard, but easily subject to Macromedia's whims. As for business -- Flash is near-ubiquitous, where SVG has virtually 0% adoption. It won't rise until net access and machines become much faster.

It's the basic "proprietary standard" argument. Proprietary sucks. Go SVG. I didn't realise SVG was so close to flash...

-- Bob

I like my data to be libre, I therefore MUCH prefer W3C standards, see a comparison of SVG && Flash here

Andreas Neuman has a pretty great summary of the differences between SVG and Flash. I know if you have any suggested changes to this he'd welcome feedback. I think it clearly shows the superiority of SVG in the long term: the only current obstacle to SVG is the installed base of browsers/viewers.