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Appendix 1: Comparing Flash (SWF) and SVG file format specifications.
| Property | SWF | SVG |
| Official W3C Standard | No | Yes |
| XML based | No, but XML-object and XML-socket available | Yes |
| Embedding foreign XML-namespaces | No | Yes |
| Binary/text based | Binary | Text based |
| Format can be read by and changed easily by humans | No | Yes |
| Accessibility (for people with disabilities) | Limited but being developed | Yes, see Accessibility features at and guidelines at http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/access.html |
| File sizes | Most of the time a little more compact than SVG, due to binary format | Relatively compact, may be gzipped |
| CSS (Style sheet) and XSL compatible | Partially, only proprietary styles | Yes |
| Can be indexed by search-engines | No | Yes |
| Use of entities | No | Yes |
| Syntax and validity checks | No | Yes, DTD and Schema |
| Needs a plugin? | Yes presently | Yes, will be a browser technology in the future |
| Plugin-Size | Small, about 200k | Large, about. 2.3 MB |
| Search for text-strings | No | Yes |
| View source | No | Yes |
| Is text re-useable? (can be selected, copied, spoken by computer, indexed, etc.) | The author may define whether a text is selectable, copyable or untouchable | Yes |
| Text along path | No | Yes |
| Scripting language, Programming | Proprietary, Macromedia ActionScript (close to ECMA JavaScript), may be mixed with ECMA JavaScript | ECMA JavaScript, Java Bindings, ActiveX controls |
| Animation | Yes, frame-based/time based; script-based | Yes, frame-based/time-based/interpolation-based; script based |
| Creation of new converters | Difficult, because of binary format. | Simple, text based, lots of XML parsers/libraries available |
Source: summarised from Neumann (2002).