Animated SVG Icons in React: Why SMIL Still Wins in 2026
The article discusses the advantages of using SMIL animations in SVG for React applications. It highlights how SMIL allows for complex animations without the need for JavaScript, resulting in smaller bundle sizes and improved performance. Additionally, SMIL animations are framework-agnostic, making them easily portable across different web frameworks.
- ▪SMIL animations are embedded directly within SVG markup, eliminating the need for runtime JavaScript.
- ▪Using SMIL can significantly reduce the size of JavaScript bundles, which is beneficial for web performance.
- ▪SMIL animations are portable and can be used across various frameworks without modification.
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| Original publisher | DEV.to (Top) |
| Canonical URL | https://dev.to/harijn72/animated-svg-icons-in-react-why-smil-still-wins-in-2026-2mf5 |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 02:49:44 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T03:06:43.106Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T03:06:43.106Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | UqJdUATahuwO |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3848521) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Hari Posted on May 18 Animated SVG Icons in React: Why SMIL Still Wins in 2026 #svg #react #animation #webdev title: "Animated SVG Icons in React: Why SMIL Still Wins in 2026" published: true tags: svg, react, animation, webdev series: "Animated SVG Icons with CSS" For years, the default answer for adding motion to web interfaces has been to reach for a JavaScript animation library.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).
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