Shenanigans! on Webkit SMIL
I have always thought that SVG would be great for the Web (more the graphics part and less the sockets part). I also think SMIL would be a good to create nice and smooth animations. Having an animation system built natively into the browser would likely be better than using JavaScript and setTimeout.
With this in mind, I was hoping that Opera and, recently, Webkit support for SMIL would make a compelling case for adding the feature to Firefox. We have a bitrotted patch that has promise. But then I saw Jeff Schiller’s report on how well Webkit supports SMIL. A score of 5/116 isn’t very compelling, especially with Opera’s 110/116 score. Come on Webkit! I need you to support SMIL better than that!
Check out Jeff’s SVG support matrix for a better idea of how well browsers support SVG.
Dave Hyatt said,
March 27, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
We will be adding more SMIL support. The implementation is just in the beginning stages.
Dave Hyatt said,
March 27, 2008 @ 2:08 pm
If we shipped an Acid 3-compliant Safari with a score of 5/116 on a SMIL compliance test, then I think “shenanigans” would be an appropriate thing to say.
However, simply having a publicly available nightly build in which we have re-enabled a feature that we were already working on prior to Acid 3… where’s the problem?
DigDug said,
March 27, 2008 @ 2:53 pm
Hasn’t IE had some support for SMIL since version 5.5? Seems like its had little to no impact on the web at all.
To: Dave Hyatt said,
March 27, 2008 @ 7:28 pm
Dave, is it possible for you WebKitters to have a decent page with exact information about what is/isn’t supported in WebKit?
http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/wiki/SpecSupport
stelt said,
March 28, 2008 @ 4:50 am
I think nobody ever thought sockets should be part of a graphics spec. Some however thought sockets would be great for many applications using those graphics. The difference is mostly a (wise or not) strategy to get a working combination implementation in the hands of content developers as far as i know.
I’m glad all the serious browser builders are now ‘fighting’ over SVG implementations however: competition on open standards implementations is good news to most content developers.
Mark Dowling said,
March 28, 2008 @ 7:59 am
Comparing where the gaps are in the Schiller report, I wonder would Adobe be amenable to releasing their more or less abandoned SVG 3 and 6PR plugins’ code to Mozilla in a similar way to the Tamarin co-operation.