Hi David,

I did a prototype using VML a few years ago. Here's a quick summary of my experience:

1. I couldn't find any real documentation on this technology. My solution was to reverse engineer the VML output generated when you export an Office document as an HTML file. The VML output by MS Office products is standard XML.

2. If you can design it in MS Office (Word, PowerPoint, Visio), you can export it out as VML.

3. VML support is limited to Internet Explorer. And, I think, that's Internet Explorer for Windows only.

4. I believe the industry "standard" alternative to VML is SVG. This requires a a free plugin from Adobe. The SVG specs are impressive, but the I found the Adobe SVG viewer bulky, slow, and buggy. Adobe may have also updated their viewer so you will want to verify this comment yourself.

I was very impressed by the promise of VML - its extremely powerful and Internet Explorer renders it VERY fast. But I was discouraged by the lack of documentation (a hint at Microsoft's opinion of the technology?) and lack of third party support. Working with VML can also be pretty tedious as its a very verbose and objects can be layered many levels deep.

Malcolm