"In the world of graphics, two major rendering
technologies have dominated the scene. The first and foremost,
bitmap rendering, has been around for decades, and technologies and
tools revolving around it have greatly matured. Images can be
displayed in many formats, namely, jpeg, png, bmp, and so on.
Designers, with the help of advanced tools, are capable of
generating impressive and sophisticated imagery to be used on Web
sites, giving them a fresh look. Tools like Adobe® Photoshop
and Image Editor have a long list of advanced algorithms that can
be applied to a bitmap of an image and are capable of changing the
entire look and feel of it. This has been adopted well, and bitmap
images have now become an important part of any Web site design.
However, as it stands now, the bitmap rendering suffers from two
important drawbacks: First, it is a static image with no motion to
it. (Note that we can support animations using the gif format, but
most of these animations are predefined and generally do not
accommodate user interaction.) Second, they are suited to a
particular resolution, or at best a set of resolutions, for which
the beauty of an image remains intact. Once the resolution is
changed, you start seeing those ugly rectangles (pixel squares),
which deteriorate the image quality and take away its luster.
Therefore, bitmaps, though capable of generating fantastic images,
at best serve a particular domain of interest, where things are
static and screen resolutions are fixed."