sometimes I take SVG for granted

When I write code like d="M 100, 100 C 300, 100 100,300 300,300" I usually
don't remember how hard it was to do things like that in the good old days.

 

Today I really wanted something to work across browsers - it took me 15
minutes to cobble something together using SMIL animation that worked in all
browsers but Internet Explorer. I spent the rest of the afternoon getting it
to work in IE. Getting the timing loops synchronized (synchronizing integer
and floating point loops) was a royal pain. It was not instructive; I am not
a better person for the effort (I have done the same bloody thing scores of
times before).  And I realized that without being able to say

<animate attributeName="opacity" values="0;1;1;0" dur="4s"
repeatCount="indefinite" />

Or

<animate attributeName="opacity" values="0;1;1;0" keyTimes="0;.1;.9;1"
dur="4s" repeatCount="indefinite" />

 

---

I'm going to have to struggle for another hour or two to get the fadein and
fadeout correct.

 

It just reminded me of how nice the SVG philosophy of markup is. Thank-you
Chris Lilley and Jon Ferraiolo and the others for the early work on behalf
of authors and artists!  

 

Cheers

David