So now you have Apple’s WebKit pushing more for CSS extensions such as animations and transformations (at least because Apple would rather push for the <canvas> tag rather than endorse SVG) while you have Mozilla pushing SVG effects (at least because Mozilla would rather throw its support to SVG extensions rather than CSS, as seen with their relatively late tackling of the Acid2 test).
But where do the twain meet? How can SVG and CSS be reconciled as needing each other to create, say, better graphical web UIs?
Plus, what’s there to gain for Apple in the extension of CSS into the animation and variables department (which is already dominated by JavaScript and, to a lesser extent, vector graphics such as Flash/ActionScript and SVG/SMIL)?
Maybe CSS can be better used for HTML animation and effects while SMIL is better for SVG animation and effects?
Re: don’t forget Opera
That’s true. Again, Mozilla is playing catch-up to a competitor with a visual web standard, but it may not even go so far as to natively implement SMIL, considering that Mozilla has a vested interest in JavaScript/ECMAScript (and the derivatives thereof) and the usage of it in as many areas as possible, including the animation that SMIL (a markup language) would natively support.
Thus, Opera easily has a leg up to Mozilla in the native implementation of vector graphics animation markups.
(Of course, Opera and WebKit are competing in the realm of CSS implementations, and it’ll be interesting how this will turn out).
acid3 includes SVG+SMIL
Don’t forget that the Acid 3 test includes tests for SVG and SMIL support. This is actually what pushed WebKit into turning on their SMIL implementation and fixing some bugs. Nightly WebKit builds are still not as good as Opera’s support of SMIL, but they’re improving weekly…
Firefox 3.1 is shooting to have some form of SMIL support to also pass more Acid3 tests. SVG+SMIL is on its interoperable way now (and there are JS toolkits out there that fake SMIL for the rest of web pages like, uh FakeSmile which actually allows SMIL in HTML).