What we actually need is a simple vector image support for the web that can be used as a plain image in an img tag, but be scaled by changing width/height etc.
We do have SVG but it is overkill for this and too verbose. A vector image format would take 1/20 of the code needed to implement SVG, use lower resources and be used interchangably with regular images.
A simple vector image format that behaves just like any other img (with alpha support preferably) would go a long way towards all those use cases where people use things like "made in CSS" and "icon fonts".
What about SVG doesn't comply with "be used interchangeably with regular images"? You can use an SVG file anywhere you can use an image file—as the source of an img element, as a background-image, etc.
It seems to me that your complaint is just the verbosity of SVG. That it is overcapable is no grounds for complaint, unless that leads to excessive complexity, which I will maintain very strongly that it does not. SVG is very simple; that XML increases its verbosity slightly is about the only fault I can find with it.
>What about SVG doesn't comply with "be used interchangeably with regular images"? You can use an SVG file anywhere you can use an image file—as the source of an img element, as a background-image, etc.
This carries over the whole penalty of the SVG engine (I did said "we have SVG for this but it's overkill", didn't I?)
I'd rather have a simplistic vector rendering engine that treats the result as a plain image (e.g could just rasterize the whole thing it and leave it at that instead of treating it as DOM nodes).
That, and I would prefer the new format being binary and more compact (including more compact than compressed SVG).
The simplicity of such an engine would make it also far more likely to have been added fifteen years before to all browsers, while waiting for SVG that took like a decade to appear and is still not supported by IE less than 10.
We do have SVG but it is overkill for this and too verbose. A vector image format would take 1/20 of the code needed to implement SVG, use lower resources and be used interchangably with regular images.
A simple vector image format that behaves just like any other img (with alpha support preferably) would go a long way towards all those use cases where people use things like "made in CSS" and "icon fonts".