SVG is fast becoming the industry standard for user interfaces. Originally designed to represent vector graphics, it has evolved to become one of the most efficient markup languages for describing user interfaces.
With SVG, every element is positioned exactly where you specify; very little formatting needs to take place. This benefits the content author as the content is significantly less complex than it would be with a traditional markup language, such as HTML. The knock-on effect of this is a second benefit - it is ideal for embedded systems with limited processing power as it means pages can be rendered faster.
In conjunction with SMIL(*) animations, SVG pages can be manipulated very efficiently. Examples of animations include menus sliding on-screen, highlights moving around a menu, or video being played. Once the animation is triggered, the native code handles the rest - no need to call out to a scripting language.
For more advanced page modifications, the Ekioh UI Engine has integrated ECMAScript(**) support offering similar functionality to ECMAScript in a conventional web browser. With a DOM tree and XMLHttpRequest support, pages can be dynamically updated with data from remote servers, such as an EPG or a news feed.
* Sychronised Multimedia Integration Language. SMIL provides an efficient way to animate attributes and CSS properties without needing to call a script.
** ECMAScript is the standard commonly known as JavaScript.