State of SVG and Canvas in Modern Browsers

By: Alastair Tse - Last Updated: 27 April 2006

My friends, just like HTML and CSS, different browsers support different subsections of the SVG and Canvas specification. As part of my work on PlotKit, the next generation javascript plotting library, I’ve decided to summarise all the quirks in SVG and Canvas support.

Browsers Considered

I am looking at browsers that are considered “modern” as of March 2006. These include:

Safari 2.0.x (W/ Adobe SVG Plugin)
Firefox 1.5.x
Opera 9.0 Preview 2
Internet Explorer 6 (w/ Adobe SVG Plugin)

I am also looking at some experiemental browsers as of March 2006.

Canvas

Canvas is defined by the WHATWG in what is known as the Web Applications 1.0 specification

Supporting Browsers

Safari 2.0 and above.
Opera 9.0 and above.
Firefox 1.5 and above.

Quirks

Safari will forget a path after fill() or stroke() has been called. Therefore, if you need to fill and stroke the same path, you must draw the path out twice.
Opera will not obey stroke() for arc paths.
Firefox and Opera will not draw shadows even with shadowStyle or shadowOffset is set on the context object.

SVG

SVG support is either provided natively, or through the Adobe SVG Viewer (ASV).

Supporting Browsers (Inline)

Safari 2.0 + ASV
Internet Explorer 6 + ASV
Safari Webkit+SVG Nightly
Opera 9.0 and above
Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and above

Quirks (Inline)

Safari Nightly will not render any text elements when inlined. (Will do so if using embed)
Safari 2.0 + ASV will not respect inlined SVG.

Internet Explorer 6 + ASV will only parse inlined SVG if the following is added to the HTML and all SVG elements are in the correct namespace svg:.

  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"
  xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
  xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  ...
  <body>
  <!-- START Required for IE to support  inlined SVG -->
  <object id="AdobeSVG"
  classid="clsid:78156a80-c6a1-4bbf-8e6a-3cd390eeb4e2" width="1"
  height="1"></object>
  <?import namespace="svg" implementation="#AdobeSVG"?>
  <!-- END   Required for IE to support inlined SVG -->
  <svg:svg width="300" height="300" baseProfile="full" version="1.1"></svg:svg>
  </body>
  </html>

Mozilla Firefox (1.5 and nightly) on Mac will not render text elements when inlined. Note that it does for Linux and Windows.
Opera 9 will refuse to draw an element if attribute filter is defined.
Internet Explorer 7b2p + ASV will not work with the Adobe SVG Viewer.

Disclaimer

The above is presented as-is with my own findings. There may be errors. Please do not use this to base your multi-million dollar business decisions.

Contact

If you have anything to add or modify, please contact me at alastair@liquidx.net.