SVG animation: History and Key Facts

Animation of Scalable Vector Graphics, an open XML-based standard vector graphics format is possible through various means: Scripting: ECMAScript is a primary means of creating animations and in

By the Pop Culture Files editorial team•Updated September 30, 2026•2 min read•✓ Fact-checked

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Animation of Scalable Vector Graphics, an open XML-based standard vector graphics format is possible through various means:

Scripting: ECMAScript is a primary means of creating animations and interactive user interfaces within SVG.

Styling: Since 2008, the development of CSS Animations as a feature in WebKit has made possible stylesheet-driven implicit animation of SVG files from within the Document Object Model (DOM).

SMIL: Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, a recommended means of animating SVG-based hypermedia, supported by the Amaya (2003) Opera (2006), Mozilla Firefox (2011), Google Chrome (2016) and Safari (2017) web browsers, and any browser that aims to pass the Acid3 web standards test of 2008 (i.e. before the test's "simplification" in 2011) as this requires SMIL support for tests 75 and 76.

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Text excerpted from SVG animation by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.