Hi Friends, Someone brought to my attention, the other day, this entry in Tavmjong's blog: http://tavmjong.free.fr/blog/?p=1262, which discusses Google's Intent to Deprecate SMIL in the Chrome browser, and links to that discussion: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/bli... Since I've been learning a lot more about animation (while writing a new Animation page for the website) it really seems rather shocking. From what I understand (although still learning, *Always*) it seems like SMIL comes the closest to being "true" SVG animation (of all the existing ways to animate SVG). The Intent to Deprecate message says that MS will be creating CSS animation support for SVG, which will make animation of SVG possible in all browsers. I don't have the technical knowledge to be able to compare SMIL to this new CSS animation (and since it says "just announced" maybe it doesn't actually exist yet). (I am aware of current CSS3 animation, but not about this new bit.) But I'm definitely curious about what will be lost of SMIL, which that new CSS can't replicate, or conversely, if this new CSS will have any new abilities that SMIL doesn't have. And I'm curious what our Inkscape community thinks about this apparently pending deprecation in Chrome? (Because I guess Mozilla/Firefox will follow suit, since IE already stopped supporting it, some versions back. And that makes it seem like a sad day for animation with Inkscape.) I understand that the hopes from several years ago, to have a working SVG animation tool by the release of Inkscape 1.0, have now gone by the wayside (I guess for lack of anyone interested enough to do it). But I wonder, if Inkscape had even an experimental SVG animation model, based on SMIL (along with a new UI which probably would be needed, afaiu) if Google would still want to deprecate SMIL? I do see some comments in the Intent to Deprecate discussion, from Inkscape-related people, or organizations, but I'm surprised not to see any discussion here in this list. Is it just because of not having anyone (or small group) interested in developing animation for Inkscape? Or maybe there was some discussion on IRC, where I don't usually watch. It just seems a little hopeless to me, not to see a vigorous uproar about it, or even any comments from Inkscape developers on the google discussion. I must be still missing something in my understanding of animation and Inkscape. Maybe it's much more hopeless than I realize, no matter what google does with Chrome? What do you all think about google deprecating SMIL?
Thanks, brynn