After years of resisting SVG in favor of VML (which never took off), Microsoft now says "We value web developers as our customers and anticipate interoperable SVG becoming a powerful tool that can be written easily across different web browsers." Moreover: "The use of the more interoperable SVG over VML is highly encouraged."
The following SVG features are currently supported in the IE9 Platform Preview (at least partially):
- Methods of embedding: inline HTML, inline XHTML, <object>, full .svg documents
- Structure: <svg>, <defs>, <use>, <g>, <image>
- Shapes: <circle>, <ellipse>, <rect>, <line>, <polyline>, <polygon>, <path>
- Text
- Filling, Stroking, (CSS3) Color
- DOML2 Core and SVGDOM
- Events
- Presentation Attributes and CSS Styling
- Transforms: translate, skewX, skewY, scale, rotate
- Methods of embedding: <embed>, <iframe>, <img>, css image, .svgz
- Gradients and Patterns
- Clipping, Masking, and Compositing
- Cursor, Marker
- Remainder of Text, Transforms, Events
Will it catch on now? Hard to say. IE9 doesn't run on XP (or other older versions of Windows), and it'll take years for people to convert en masse to IE9 from IE7 and IE8 (witness the slow death of IE6). As Cameron Laird recently said, "If conventional 'universal coverage' is a requirement, this winter's announcements can only truly impact decisions several years from now."
But hey, better late than never, I say.