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Interestingly, "VML is Microsoft's contribution to the creation of the SVG standard." I'd never heard of it either.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250524%28v=vs.85%...

Silverlight was probably the last major Microsoft attempt at platform lock-in, but it was too late; arguably it was killed by Apple's platform lock-in barrier on iOS just as much as Flash was.

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He mentions VML almost right out of the gate, here didn't he? "I have followed the standards for XML-based vector graphics closely. PGML (mainly from Adobe) and VML (mainly from Microsoft),"

Thanks. Yeah I didn't really see VML as relevant after its very inception. True it was sitting there in IE for an extra decade or two but it never had some sort of resurgence or potential that I saw. Silverlight on the other hand had serious people saying "this is the future!" When VML first came out, it had to be taken seriously. Next to PGML, not so much.

I am sad to report that it is still in active use in state-of-the-art HTML email. Only way to do rounded corners in Outlook.

Yea, Word 2000 and later is famous for VML and other IE-specific features in the HTML output, and Outlook 2007 and later uses Word for HTML email.

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