Hello Tavmjong,
Saturday, November 30, 2013, 10:07:48 PM, you wrote:
I personally think SMIL is quite useful, but you should be aware that Microsoft has been quite forthright that they will not support SMIL in Internet Explorer. They don't want to support a second declarative animation model, the first being CSS Animations[1].
To be clear, what they said is that they will not support *two incompatible models* and at the time they saw more call for CSS animations (for HTML/CSS), thus they would not ass SMIL animation support.
The work on Web Animations, which harmonises the two models into two expressions of one underlying model, removes that objection. I discussed that with a Microsoft representative at the recent TPAC meeting and he thought this made all the difference.
So, never say never.