Vector Markup Language (VML) is an obsolete

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

-based

file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...

for two-dimensional

vector graphics Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display a ...

. It was specified in Part 4 of the

Office Open XML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version a ...

standards

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

IEC The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...

29500 and

ECMA Ecma International () is a nonprofit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its current name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) changed its name to reflect the organizatio ...

-376. According to the specification, VML is a deprecated format included in Office Open XML for legacy reasons only. VML was used extensively in MS Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. In 2012, with the release of

Internet Explorer 10 Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) is the tenth, and by now, discontinued, version of the Internet Explorer web browser and the successor to Internet Explorer 9, released by Microsoft on September 4, 2012, shortly after the completion of Windows Ser ...

, VML became obsolete and is no longer supported by Internet Explorer standard mode. It is a legacy feature that is available in Internet Explorer 10 only when the browser is set to run in modes that emulate the functionality of previous versions of Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, and 9.

History

VML was submitted to the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

(W3C) in 1998 by

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartered ...

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe Systems ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

, and

Vision Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to: Perception Optical perception * Visual perception, the sense of sight * Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight * Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain un ...

. Around the same time other competing W3C submissions were received in the area of web vector graphics, such as

Precision Graphics Markup Language Precision Graphics Markup Language (PGML) is an XML-based language for representing vector graphics. It was a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) submission by Adobe Systems, IBM, Netscape, and Sun Microsystems, that was not adopted as a recommen ...

(PGML) from

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

, and others. As a result of these submissions, a new W3C working group was created, which produced

Scalable Vector Graphics Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium sinc ...

(SVG). SVG became a W3C Recommendation in 2001 as a language for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics in XML. VML has been largely deprecated in favor of other formats, such as SVG. SVG is not compatible with VML. Development of the format ceased in 1998. VML is implemented in Internet Explorer from version 5 to version 9 and in

Microsoft Office 2000 Microsoft Office 2000 (version 9.0) is a release of Microsoft Office, an office suite developed and distributed by Microsoft for the Windows family of operating systems. Office 2000 was released to manufacturing on March 29, 1999, and was made av ...

. VML is no longer available in

. Microsoft expects web sites to transition to SVG. Version 2 of the

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

API used to use VML for vector paths on

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

5.5+, but has been officially

deprecate In several fields, especially computing, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design, or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe, without completely removing ...

d in favour of version 3, which does not.

Syntax

Below is a VML instance as produced by

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro (comp ...

2010:

4, 15, 5, 10, 6, 31, 9, 9 False 6 3 Note that, by specifying a root element named "xml", VML contravenes the

Recommendation of the

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

, which states that names beginning 'x' 'm' 'l' are "reserved for standardization in this or future versions of this specification". Ovale

VML, when embedded within

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

markup, is read and processed by

Microsoft Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in Wi ...

(but not other browsers); for example, the following example displays a solid blue oval:

Implementations

VML is used by most

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

applications, such as

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...

and

Microsoft Visio Microsoft Visio ( ) (formerly Microsoft Office Visio) is a diagramming and vector graphics application and is part of the Microsoft Office family. The product was first introduced in 1992, made by the Shapeware Corporation, later renamed Visio ...

, within HTML files created using the 'Save As HTML' option (plain HTML or MHT). Such files retain complete

vector Vector most often refers to: *Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction *Vector (epidemiology), an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematic ...

information, and can be reopened for editing using other Microsoft applications, such as

Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoi ...

. VML was natively supported by Microsoft's

up to version 9 inline within HTML, using an undefined version of

SGML The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates": * Declarative: Markup should des ...

namespace In computing, a namespace is a set of signs (''names'') that are used to identify and refer to objects of various kinds. A namespace ensures that all of a given set of objects have unique names so that they can be easily identified. Namespaces ...

s. Support for VML was dropped in Internet Explorer 10 and subsequent versions. Support for "ink annotations" in

files was added to

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source productivity software, office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was fork (software development), forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of t ...

during the 3.7 development cycle. VML is not natively supported by most web browsers. Web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari or Google Chrome support

(SVG) instead of VML.

Microsoft Outlook HTML email rendering

Though VML is deprecated as a standard in Internet Explorer, it is most commonly used in relation to the development of HTML emails rendered in Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013. The use of background-images in email campaigns requires the use of VML to be displayed in Outlook because Outlook does not support the CSS or HTML attributes for background-images.

Full width table cell background images

Tiled full width table cell background images

Specified width table cell background images

Text