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Excluding animations kills this for me . We need more SVG animations on the web. But the state of animation in SVG is a headache unless your using a third party

Excluding animations kills this for me . We need more SVG animations on the web. But the state of animation in SVG is a headache unless your using a third party library .

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MisterBiggs 5y ago
If your argument is that animations in SVG don't work well then wouldn't it be best to use TinyVG in place of static SVG assets and make something new that is better suited for animation?
jlarocco 5y ago
> We need more SVG animations on the web. Do we, though? We've already had animated GIFs, the marquee tag, Java applets, and Flash animation, and they've all died out because 99.9% of the time the animation is obnoxious and terrible. Vector animation would be just as annoying.
- bsder 5y ago
  Flash animation didn't die out--it was assassinated by Steve Jobs. Flash renderers didn't have to suck. However, there wasn't enough money in it for anyone to care.
  - jlarocco 5y ago
    Okay, and he killed it because it was annoying to users and provided little value.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  GIFs are horrible in terms of memory. Java applets died out of technical reasons (and was replaced by flash) Flash died, because it was proprietary and Adobe did not open it up. (and flash was vector animation btw.) Otherwise it surely would still be around. And in a way it is, as you can export flash animations to the html canvas element. And some people do that (with quirks) In other words, a simple, but powerful vector animation tool, is very much needed. The current state is a mess. And you probably do not like vector animated advertisement, or websites that use animations for the sake of animations. Sure, no one wants that. But how about games, or interactive graphic to for example show complex data in context to some map? Or animations for didactic purposes? Cartoons? A animation well done is actually one, you do not notice. (but you would notice, if it was missing)
  - db65edfc7996 5y ago
    >Flash died, because it was proprietary and Adobe did not open it up. (and flash was vector animation btw.) I think the iPhone refusing to support Flash had far more to do than the underlying business practices or IP.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Well, to me that is the same thing, because since it was proprietary, Steve Jobs and Apple could not control it (and maybe improve it and adopt to their standards) - so they rather threw it out. (not that apple had a problem with proprietary tools, justs with proprietary tools not under their control, in a vital position) If the Flash player would have been open in a way, chromium/webkit is, with many top players working on it - it very likely would still be around and maybe even dominating, as it was way superior in terms of features and more importantly, it was not a mess to work with, like HTML still is.
    - Findecanor 5y ago
      At its end it was not used much for vector animation as it was used as for playing video on the web. But it had a reputation for being insecure, and for being slow — because it retained the ability to put vector animation on top of videos. When HTML 5 was adopted with video playback tags (safer, faster, open), that killed it for web video.
- __m 5y ago
  That’s a bit revisionist history. Flash was pretty popular and animations haven’t gone away.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Do we, though? We do definitely need better vector graphics, including animations. Because then you can have the same crisp images and animations regardless of your resolution or screen size.
- sigg3 5y ago
  <marquee>Bring Me Back!!</marquee>
- pcmaffey 5y ago
  For some tasteful svg animation examples, check out my blog articles. [1] https://www.pcmaffey.com https://www.pcmaffey.com
ikskuh 5y ago
TinyVG is not meant to ever support animations, but should be used in all places where this is not required. So if you want to use animation for everything, you could design a secondary format that allows animation of TinyVG files hint
- dnautics 5y ago
  the biggest thing we could get for the standard that would really help people to animate TinyVG files via a secondary format, without animating TinyVG files, is if you can tag an item with a reference. Maybe do commands 17-26, which are (command n - 16) + an optional 32-bit "reference" field on the top. References are basically "up to the implementor" to do whatever they want with. You might want to also do a command "16" which is an optional "group separator", followed by a 32-bit reference that is otherwise ignored by the TVG engine. You could probably take a hard line that once you have references, there is no need for any other extension, those are doable using references. BTW, has someone worked on a js backfill that lets you load the file format in an image tag? I'd be happy to give it a shot with zig/wasm. Edit: OK, I just found the polyfill.
  - ikskuh 5y ago
    The tag thingy is an interesting idea, could you create a github issue on the specification repo for that? => https://github.com/TinyVG/specification/ https://github.com/TinyVG/specification/
    - dnautics 5y ago
      ok, i'll try to find some time this week!
jancsika 5y ago
Can't you use the animate method on them at this point? E.g., even in Firefox I can do myRect.animate([ { x: "0px" }, { x: "100px" }], 1000); and it works correctly.

Excluding animations kills this for me . We need more SVG animations on the web. But the state of animation in SVG is a headache unless your using a third party library .

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

MisterBiggs 5y ago

If your argument is that animations in SVG don't work well then wouldn't it be best to use TinyVG in place of static SVG assets and make something new that is better suited for animation?

jlarocco 5y ago

> We need more SVG animations on the web. Do we, though? We've already had animated GIFs, the marquee tag, Java applets, and Flash animation, and they've all died out because 99.9% of the time the animation is obnoxious and terrible. Vector animation would be just as annoying.

bsder 5y ago
Flash animation didn't die out--it was assassinated by Steve Jobs. Flash renderers didn't have to suck. However, there wasn't enough money in it for anyone to care.
- jlarocco 5y ago
  Okay, and he killed it because it was annoying to users and provided little value.
hutzlibu 5y ago
GIFs are horrible in terms of memory. Java applets died out of technical reasons (and was replaced by flash) Flash died, because it was proprietary and Adobe did not open it up. (and flash was vector animation btw.) Otherwise it surely would still be around. And in a way it is, as you can export flash animations to the html canvas element. And some people do that (with quirks) In other words, a simple, but powerful vector animation tool, is very much needed. The current state is a mess. And you probably do not like vector animated advertisement, or websites that use animations for the sake of animations. Sure, no one wants that. But how about games, or interactive graphic to for example show complex data in context to some map? Or animations for didactic purposes? Cartoons? A animation well done is actually one, you do not notice. (but you would notice, if it was missing)
- db65edfc7996 5y ago
  >Flash died, because it was proprietary and Adobe did not open it up. (and flash was vector animation btw.) I think the iPhone refusing to support Flash had far more to do than the underlying business practices or IP.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Well, to me that is the same thing, because since it was proprietary, Steve Jobs and Apple could not control it (and maybe improve it and adopt to their standards) - so they rather threw it out. (not that apple had a problem with proprietary tools, justs with proprietary tools not under their control, in a vital position) If the Flash player would have been open in a way, chromium/webkit is, with many top players working on it - it very likely would still be around and maybe even dominating, as it was way superior in terms of features and more importantly, it was not a mess to work with, like HTML still is.
  - Findecanor 5y ago
    At its end it was not used much for vector animation as it was used as for playing video on the web. But it had a reputation for being insecure, and for being slow — because it retained the ability to put vector animation on top of videos. When HTML 5 was adopted with video playback tags (safer, faster, open), that killed it for web video.
__m 5y ago
That’s a bit revisionist history. Flash was pretty popular and animations haven’t gone away.
dmitriid 5y ago
> Do we, though? We do definitely need better vector graphics, including animations. Because then you can have the same crisp images and animations regardless of your resolution or screen size.
sigg3 5y ago
<marquee>Bring Me Back!!</marquee>
pcmaffey 5y ago
For some tasteful svg animation examples, check out my blog articles. [1] https://www.pcmaffey.com https://www.pcmaffey.com

ikskuh 5y ago

TinyVG is not meant to ever support animations, but should be used in all places where this is not required. So if you want to use animation for everything, you could design a secondary format that allows animation of TinyVG files hint

dnautics 5y ago
the biggest thing we could get for the standard that would really help people to animate TinyVG files via a secondary format, without animating TinyVG files, is if you can tag an item with a reference. Maybe do commands 17-26, which are (command n - 16) + an optional 32-bit "reference" field on the top. References are basically "up to the implementor" to do whatever they want with. You might want to also do a command "16" which is an optional "group separator", followed by a 32-bit reference that is otherwise ignored by the TVG engine. You could probably take a hard line that once you have references, there is no need for any other extension, those are doable using references. BTW, has someone worked on a js backfill that lets you load the file format in an image tag? I'd be happy to give it a shot with zig/wasm. Edit: OK, I just found the polyfill.
- ikskuh 5y ago
  The tag thingy is an interesting idea, could you create a github issue on the specification repo for that? => https://github.com/TinyVG/specification/ https://github.com/TinyVG/specification/
  - dnautics 5y ago
    ok, i'll try to find some time this week!

jancsika 5y ago

Can't you use the animate method on them at this point? E.g., even in Firefox I can do myRect.animate([ { x: "0px" }, { x: "100px" }], 1000); and it works correctly.