The capabilities of flash are the features of a piece of software.
The capabilities of SVG go way beyond their own vocabulary - they draw on the methods of wider technologies - XML and the DOM.
So this means that anything which is possible with client-side scripting, or client-server interaction, is possible with SVG as the visual interface.
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Originally Posted by mindlessLemming
So is SVG a "thick-client" too? (capable of decent/reliable client side processing)
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Yes - in fact using the Adobe plugin you get better DOM support in IE. Many of the browser inconsistencies are wiped out because the SVG DOM uses standard methods which are implemented in the plugin, rather than relying solely on the browser's own scripting engine. The end result is a javascript-based scripting model without the pain of client ambiguity.
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Originally Posted by mindlessLemming
Can SVG send and receive server requests without a page refresh?
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You can do this by creating elements that make server requests, or using XML methods to retrieve data from the server (eg, XPointer references).
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Originally Posted by mindlessLemming
Can SVG facilitate multi-stream audio+video conferencing with an "all members manipulable" app. running in the middle aswell?
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How so - you mean an SVG-based interface to embedded streaming video? yeah it could do that - SVG is just XML - anything where you can use an XHTML interface you could replace that with SVG.
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Originally Posted by mindlessLemming
Can SVG also replace Director/Shockwave as far as CD distribution? (eg: Macromedia MX Suite's initial installation app. is Flash, so are many other similar apps.)
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Not sure what you mean ..?
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Originally Posted by mindlessLemming
Oh, and about Flash's proprietry language..would it make you feel better if you thought of it as another twisted and malformed child of javascript?
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No
Is actionscript publically extensible? Can you do OO scripting and method prototyping with it? Is knowledge of it useful to other applications?
So back at you mate - can Flash even come close to the capabilities of SVG:
- is it accessible?
- can it be indexed and searched?
- can you generate it on the server with PHP, ASP or any server side process at all, without any special extensions?
- can you do on-the-fly transforms between graphics and plain text?
- do you have a choice of built-in animation syntax (SMIL), or the option of doing all animation through custom scripting?
- can anyone make and distribute viewing or generation software for it?
- can you edit movies in a plain-text editor?
- does it have a DOM?
- is it developed independently of the commercial interests of a single company?