SVG SMIL or RequestAnimationFrame animation

Question

I have 2 options of animating a SVG shape transform attribute. The first one is trough SMIL. The downside is a less browser support. The second one is trough JavaScript, I get a better browser support but add complexity.

Are there any performance reports or studies made to backout one or the other? Are SMIL animations done on a different UI threat?

Thank you

Answer 1

Sarah Drasner wrote a wonderful guest post about this on CSS Tricks: Weighing SVG Animation Techniques (with Benchmarks). It's definitely worth to take a look at it.