[Editor's Note: To avoid confusion and spreading of mis-information, I feel it's my duty to state that Adobe later changed their decision about removing the SVG Viewer download from their site. As of Dec 2006, Adobe has decided to keep the viewer download available indefinitely.]
Via JD on EP. Adobe announces End-Of-Life for SVG Viewer. I've tried to keep optimistic about the Adobe purchase of Macromedia but I guess I always knew it was a matter of time before Adobe draws the line and says "No more open standards". It's unfortunate because it was the one thing that I still liked about Adobe - I can't stand their bloated PDF viewer, FrameMaker or Photoshop anymore.
I think at the very least, Adobe should take into account former employee Jon Ferraiolo's suggestions. Since the Adobe SVG Viewer is the only realistic and mature option for SVG content in Internet Explorer for the conceivable future, removing it as a download in January 2008 could only be taken as an openly hostile move against the SVG development community. Even if IE8 moved fast and included some support for SVG it would not be truly ready for primetime by the time Adobe removes its download.
If we don't receive any concessions from Adobe on this, what is the development community left with? Develop an IE browser plugin out of Mozilla? A Batik-based browser plugin? Do we look to Amanith or Renesis?
Personally I'm going to keep my eye on Dojo2D since it's been in my mind for some time that I need to start moving up the stack in terms of web development anyway.
Hi there,
I wouldn’t worry about poor old Adobe taking their dated tool of the shelf. Opera, Firefox and many many mobile phones out there are still going strong. I recently developed my fist SVG hello world widget in Opera, and SVG has many uses there! Also, after re-discovering the tremendous power of XML and XSL to create SVG in many forms, I can’t see that there is any stopping this winning horse.
Some reminders:
SVG is open – Flash, VML and all the other developer frustrations out there are not
SVG does time based animation, while Flash does frame based animation
SVG purrs like a kitten when used with other XML related technologies. Opera is proving this very strongly at the moment. Man, you can do just about anything you can think of.
Oh well, I’m still a believer! Have a look at my site if you like at http://www.locateandtrade.com. It’s South African based, but it’s a good start for a SVG implementation. I’m already busy with a whole new version, that will use XML all the way.
Thanks for you stunning site! I visit it regularely. I just also stumbled onto this one http://www.treebuilder.de/default.asp?file=306286.xml shows you SVG still has some bite!
Cheers!