This article is part of a series on CSS + SVG animations — the zero-JavaScript motion stack.

Introduction

Modern browsers have a powerful, underappreciated animation system built right in: SVG + CSS keyframes . No runtime, no bundler magic — just markup and styles that the browser hardware-accelerates automatically.

In this article we'll explore CSS Animation vs SMIL: Why CSS Always Wins for SVG and look at practical, copy-paste examples you can drop into any React, Vue, or plain HTML project.

Why SVG + CSS?

SVG shapes live in the DOM. CSS already knows how to animate DOM elements with @keyframes .…