[thelist] SVG versus Flash?

[Richard Bennett]

hi,
I've been working with SVG in a professional context for the last 6 months,
and can offer a little feedback from that:

* Use Flash if you want to make a Flash-like website - replicating the same
effect using SVG is hard.
* Use Flash if you want complex animations, or complex games. (SVG's built
in SMIL animation engine is extremely processor intensive, although good
results can be had using Javascript animations.)
* Use Flash if your users will not be so computer literate, for instance a
children's site, or a site appealing to a wide audience.
* Use Flash if sound is important - SVG/SMIL supports sound, but it's pretty
basic.
* Use Flash if you prefer WYSIWYG to script.

SVG has some distinct advantages too:
* It's fully scriptable - using a DOM1 (part DOM2) interface and Javascript.
That means you can start with an empty SVG image, and build it up using
Javascript. This is great for real-time display of , for instance, a
machine's status online. You can have dials and readouts replicating those
on the machine, showing the values in buffered real-time.
* SVG can easily be created by ASP, PHP, Perl or whatever, and extracted
from a database. (take care to set correct mime-types on the server)
* It will run on IE/NS4+NS6/Mozilla, on PC/MAC/Linux (Flash probably does
too) - Not on Opera though.
* It has a built-in ECMA-script (javascript) engine, so you don't have to
code per browser, and you don't need to learn Flash's action-script.
* SVG *is* XML, meaning it can be read by anything that can read XML . Flash
can *use* XML, but needs to convert it before use.
* This also allows SVG to be transformed through an XSLT stylesheet/parser.
* SVG supports standard CSS1 style-sheets.
* text used in SVG remains selectable and searchable.
* You only need a texteditor to create SVG, no need to buy Flash, there are
a few SVG editors available, but only just starting to become useable.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Joergen Ramskov" <mqy4fxax36001 at sneakemail.com>
> Of course there are advantages to choosing both SVG and Flash. Here is
what
> I could think of:
> Good (SVG): Open standard/W3C Recommendation, future browsers will
probably
> support it.
There is a good plugin, from Adobe which is distributed with all their
software, including Acrobat Reader, so if you don't put a PDF file on the
web because your audience might not have acrobat reader, you shouldn't use
SVG . Mozilla has a version with (partial) native SVG support, don't expect
Microsoft to include the SVG plugin natively anytime soon.

> Where can I find more info? (I have looked a bit around the net, but can't
> find much about this)
>
A nice list of resources here:
http://www.pinkjuice.com/SVG/SVGlinks.htm
and join the developers list here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/

Cheers,
Richard.