How Opera ranks with its SVG implementation? “Best native implementation”
Published April 23rd, 2007 4:43 PM EDT By Daniel GoldmanJeff Schiller, a software developer, has done some nice work grading the support of Scalable Vector Graphics, otherwise known as SVG, in browsers and plugins.
Using the SVG Test Suite supplied by the W3C, he graded each of the browsers and browser plugins on their support for SVG.
Here are the results (score out of 100%):
Browsers:
Opera 9.10: 89.64%
Firefox 3.0 PreA4: 56.00%
Konqueror 3.5.5: 53.03%
Opera 8.5: 47.27%
Firefox 2.0.1: 45.82%
Firefox 1.5.0.11: 44.55%
Browser plugins:
Batik: 92.18%
Adobe SVG Viewer 6 PR1: 85.82%
Adobe SVG Viewer 3: 82.73%
Renesis 0.5: 32.91%
“In roughly a year, the Opera browser went from being one of the least usable SVG implementations (no scripting/DOM support) to the best native implementation and achieved a higher score than the famed Adobe SVG Viewer”
It should be pointed out that Opera has greatly advanced its support for SVG since Opera 9.1 and 9.2. The Wii Opera-powered browser has a more advanced rendering engine than the desktop version of Opera 9 (The next major rendering engine update for Opera will likely be Opera 9.5). If these tests would be taken again using the Wii browser (with the newer rendering engine), Opera would score much higher. According to one internal estimate, Opera would score about 95%.
I was at a recent Mobile Monday conference in New York, where the day’s talks gathered around SVG. Opera’s implementation of SVG was lauded by most speakers as “top of the line.”
SVG allows you to create graphics and animations using text-only. One of the main advantages to using SVG is “write once, run on any screen resolution.” Since the graphics and animations are text-based, they can be easily adapted for any screen size.
SVG is very popular on mobile phones for this reason.
If you’re wondering why Opera is putting resources into SVG? Well… As I’ve mentioned before, Opera 9 for mobile phones supports Opera Widgets, and since Opera Widgets are written using common web standards, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and SVG, you’ll be able to make complex and neat-looking mobile applications that will work on any phone with an Opera browser. Think of the possibilities.
(Learn more about SVG on dev.opera.com)
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I should also point out though that I don’t think the SVG Test Suite is the definite source for completeness or correctness in implementations of SVG, but it is one of the better sources. Performance is another concern, and Opera does beat Firefox in a lot of SVG apps I’ve played with.
Looking forward to 9.5 and beyond!
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It seems embed type=”image/svg+xml” …> don’t work, though…
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looking forward to Kestrel…
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> It seems embed type=”image/svg+xml” …> don’t work
Hmm.. actually I’m unable to pinpoint exactly which embed tags work and which don’t.
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What if the test suites include scripting/DOM support? This would slightly increase the percentage for Firefox and Adobe SVG viewer…
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minghong, the test suite does include tests for scripting and support (though I think animation has a larger share).
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Sorry, that should be “scripting and DOM support”
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minghong, what do you base that assumption on?
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Hey, is there really a Batik browser plugin available? I only found that standalone SVG viewer.
Now that Batik supports animation, I’d really be glad if it could add SVG support to browsers. Adobe stopped supporting ASV, so we really need an alternative for this - sadly not everybody’s using Opera.
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Frederik,
Batik has a standlone viewer (Squiggle) but can also be used as a Java applet in any browser. I’ve tried this on multiple browsers and it works (includes a JS interpreter too). However, I haven’t done any performance tests with Batik yet to see how it would fair against games or interactive SVG apps that need to be fast.
Jeff