Earlier this week, Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 9 developer preview ^[1], which showcases the improved rendering capabilities Internet Explorer. One of the biggest improvements in IE 9 is native SVG ^[2] (Scalable Vector Graphics) support.

It’s simply shocking that it took Microsoft so long to realize SVG’s potential. SVG support has been present in other browsers like Firefox and Opera for half a decade and all major browsers other than Internet Explorer have some level of support for SVG.

Earlier this year, Patrick Dengler- a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, joined the SVG Working Group. Microsoft will be working with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to ensure that their implementation is interoperable and will assist in ironing out ambiguities present in the SVG 1.1 specification.

It is good that the sleeping giant is finally waking up. However, as illustrated by the CodeDread chart ^[3], Microsoft has a lot of hard work ahead of itself, if it dreams of ever catching up with the likes of Opera and Chrome.