From the start, SVG was designed as a language for both static and animated vector graphics. At one time dubbed “a Flash killer,” it is indeed suitable for a wide variety of scripted and declarative animations. Unfortunately, even several years after the introduction of SVG, real SVG animations (as opposed to static SVG) are hard to find on the Web. There are several reasons for this, the most important being the lack of a single standard player that would offer a significant competitive advantage over Adobe’s (formerly Macromedia’s) Flash. Currently, almost all of the animations on the Web are either in Flash or in animated GIF formats—just as they were five years ago.
From Inkscape’s perspective, however, this may be a good thing. Inkscape does not yet support creating animated SVG documents (except if you add animation attributes manually via XML Editor) and can only display SVG documents statically. But you still can use Inkscape to create static frames and then combine them into a GIF or Flash animation with some other software. This method may seem awkward at first, but it is in fact workable and may deliver very good results. Why is this worth the trouble, and what kinds of animations are best suited for this technique?
Any animation including complex natural or interacting movements is perhaps out of reach for the Inkscape-based animation technique described in this tutorial. Without a timeline control, it’s difficult to work on anything but simple repeating animations several frames long. But then, many animations for the Web—banners, headings, blog avatars—fit this description perfectly.