Browser support for animated SVG
To help you understand how SVGator's animation properties perform across major browsers, here is a detailed compatibility overview, highlighting their support for CSS and JavaScript (JS) animations, along with the earliest browser versions that fully support each feature.
CSS Animation Compatibility
| Animation Property | Chrome | Firefox | Safari | Edge | Opera |
| Size | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Corner Radius | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Radius | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Position | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Origin | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Scale | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Rotate | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Skew | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Opacity | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Fill color | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Fill Opacity | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Color | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Opacity | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Width | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Offset | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Dashes | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Filters | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ⚠️(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Move on Path | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ⚠️(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Morph (d attr.) | ✅(110+) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
CSS Compatibility and Benefits
Basic transforms and appearance properties, such as scale, rotate, skew, opacity, fill, stroke (color), and stroke-width are well-supported across all modern browsers (Chrome 60+, Firefox 60+, Safari 12+, Edge 79+, Opera 60+), ensuring consistent behavior.
Shape-related attributes like rx, ry, x, y, and radius are also reliably supported, making them safe choices for CSS-based animations involving SVG or UI elements.
A key advantage of CSS animations is that they run natively in the browser, eliminating the need for extra JavaScript libraries. This leads to smaller bundle sizes and faster page loads.
CSS is especially effective for UI animations like button transitions, tooltips, loaders, and state changes, thanks to its lightweight and efficient execution that ensures smooth performance.
Limited or Inconsistent Support in CSS
CSS support across browsers can be limited or inconsistent, particularly when it comes to advanced features. Filters generally work well in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera, but Safari still struggles with rendering and performance issues. Similarly, motion along a path is supported in most major browsers except Safari, where behavior remains unreliable.
Color transition animations are also somewhat restricted, allowing smooth transitions between colors or between gradients, but not between a gradient and a solid color. Morphing using the d attribute is only supported in Chrome, Edge, and Opera, while Firefox and Safari do not support it at all.
Important Takeaways
- CSS animations are ideal for simple, performance-sensitive effects.
- For anything involving path manipulation or timeline-based sequencing, JavaScript is necessary.
- Safari continues to be the least reliable in terms of CSS animation consistency, especially with filters and more advanced SVG interactions.
JavaScript Animation Compatibility
| Animation Property | Chrome | Firefox | Safari | Edge | Opera |
| Size | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Corner Radius | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Radius | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Position | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Origin | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Scale | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Rotate | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Skew | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Opacity | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Fill color | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Fill Opacity | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Color | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Opacity | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Width | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Offset | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Stroke Dashes | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Filters | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Move on Path | ✅(110+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(16.4+) | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
| Morph (d attr.) | ✅(110+) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅(110+) | ✅(96+) |
Full Control & Flexibility
JavaScript offers complete control and flexibility over SVG elements, enabling precise manipulation of attributes that CSS can't access. This includes advanced properties like the d attribute for path morphing, motion along custom paths, stroke dash patterns, and complex filter transitions.
Color transitions are also fully supported with JavaScript. Animations can smoothly shift from solid colors to gradients, or between different gradients, even when the number of color stops and offset values vary.
Heavier and More Complex
Even though SVGator handles the code for you, JavaScript-based animations are still heavier by nature compared to CSS. They require embedding or loading extra script logic to drive the animations, which adds more weight to the final export and can slightly impact load time, especially on mobile or low-performance devices.
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