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SVGs that feel like GIFs

(koaning.io)
518 points cantdutchthis | 1 comments | 08 Jul 25 08:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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unleaded ◴[08 Jul 25 16:34 UTC] No.44501635[source]▶
You can do a lot of impressive things with SVGs. Some examples from Wikipedia (no JS in any)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/SMIL_mis... missile command clone

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/London_U... tube map

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Rolling_... rolling shutter animation

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leonidasv ◴[08 Jul 25 16:45 UTC] No.44501713[source]▶
SVG started as an open competitor to Shockwave/Flash Player and also an application format for PDAs. It almost got networking support once.
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echelon ◴[08 Jul 25 17:00 UTC] No.44501865[source]▶
Too bad nothing has ever come close to replacing the SWF format.

You could pack so much into a single binary distributable media file. Games, videos, websites, infographics, tools, chat rooms.

SWF was brilliant and it should have thrived.

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unleaded ◴[08 Jul 25 17:15 UTC] No.44502006[source]▶
absolutely. really is strange that you used to be able to download a music video in less than 2-3mb with lossless video quality, but now that's not really a thing anymore. I feel like if Adobe didn't get greedy and encourage its use for absolutely everything (and/or web standards got up to speed faster) people wouldn't wouldn't approach talking about Flash with the 10-foot pole they often do today (as a platform—not how everyone talks about how much they loved flash games)
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1. xp84 ◴[09 Jul 25 21:14 UTC] No.44514802[source]▶
What else was wildly cool about Flash was that the player itself was a shockingly tiny download -- even on 56K it was an incredibly fast download, and because we were all using MSIE then, the installation of this ActiveX thing that was the Flash Player required like one quick click and it was installed, and in 5 seconds you were seeing the Flash content.

Obviously the fact that it was that low-friction to install any non-sandboxed application code was a very naïve thing to allow, but I still have to hand it to the Macromedia developers for packing the whole player into such a tiny download and making it so frictionless. I'm pretty sure that had a HUGE impact on its adoption over say, Java applets. Java took a lot more time and effort to install, and while it had decent penetration (many "chat room" services and in-browser games like Yahoo Games used Java) it was never taken for granted that 'everyone has it' the way Flash was (until Steve Jobs singlehandedly burned that assumption to the ground with fire).