What Is Vector Markup Language (VML)?

It was the end of an era. When the W3C announced that it was retiring Vector Markup Language (VML), it marked the end of an early attempt at bringing vector graphics to webpages. VML never caught on, but its successor, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), has become widely supported by browsers and is still being developed by the W3C. SVG allows for scalable vector graphics to be embedded in HTML documents, which means they can be used for any size screen or resolution without losing quality or clarity. It also supports scripting and animation with JavaScript, which makes it possible to create interactive web pages with dynamic content. The Vector Markup Language (VML) was submitted to the W3C in 1998 and intended to encode vector graphics in HTML. But it never caught on. Why? Well, it turns out that the W3C already had a working group that worked hard on a new standard: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and they beat VML to the punch by releasing SVG as a recommendation in 2001. The last time you saw VML on a web page, it was probably just an image of a little boy sitting on a park bench with a look of deep thought on his face and a caption that read, "thinking about what?" but the fact is that VML (Vector Markup Language) was once the de facto standard for vector graphics on the internet. It's still used in some places but has been replaced mainly by SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Microsoft developed VML in the mid-1990s to compete with Adobe's Flash technology. Though other companies were involved, VML was primarily a Microsoft initiative. At least, you saw Microsoft's contribution through its support, starting with IE 5.0 and Office 2000. While Microsoft has continued to support VML, almost every other web browser has supported SVG since 1999, so much so that most people don't even realize there are other options!