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Microsoft Adopts SVG For Internet Explorer 9
An anonymous reader writes "SVG has been a published standard for almost a decade. Microsoft has had nothing to do with it, even while every other major browser adopted SVG as a supported format and interface. Just in the last few weeks, though, Microsoft has thrown a surprising amount of its weight behind SVG." This means for IE 9, but it's a start.
So much fucking FUD, people.
Windows XP (Server 2003/R2 is still mainstream, but they won't port IE9 to it becaus of the same reasons like they did with 2000 and IE 7), is in extended support, which means no more new features, just security updates until 2014.
Now, if you'd like those features, Microsoft has a program in which you pay the devs extra to port it to (insert older Windows OS here).
IE 9 will run on Vista and 7.
I've tested with an application that I'm developing that generates complex SVG network maps (that validate as SVG 1.1 with the W3C validator with no errors).
Linear gradients don't work at all, stroke and fill colors appear to be sporadic. JavaScript doesn't work (but I didn't expect it to as it's targeted to Chrome and Safari primarily right now).
I expect that MS will add more functionality as the preview progresses. They have a lot of work to do, regardless.
And with all that said, perhaps it's time to put Microsoft's SVG implementation through the /. torture rack.
Not necessary - here is a nice comparision for all current browser implementations of SVG and how much tests of the official SVG test suite they pass : SVG Implementation Table. If you click on the chart you get a very detailed view.
To summarize:
IE9: 29% of the SVG test cases,
Firefox: 72%,
Chrome/Safari: 83
Opera: 93%
IE9 is way behind, Opera is the winner in this test