Bring On The Snow

Apparently the Chicago area is supposed to be hit with the biggest snowstorm in 28 years for December 1st. So, in celebration, I've turned on the snow in my blog header. For those with cool web browsers like Firefox 1.5+ or Opera 9 (or even the not-cool browser Internet Explorer with the Adobe SVG Viewer plugin) you might need to right-click in the image frame to force reload ... or wait until your browser's cache pops. For those curious, the SVG does not display at all using Emiasys' Renesis plugin ... pooh.

Anyway, sorry for the CPU hit, but 'tis the season. If anyone can let me know if a Safari nightly build displays the snow yet, that would be awesome - you can consider it your Christmas present to me.

Hm, I wonder if I should try to modify the library to use the Dojo2D API in the Dojo toolkit for that true cross-browser effect. That might prove to be a fun little project and a good way to dip my toe in the Ajax toolkit pool...

[Update: Merry Christmas to me. Allan Jardine tells me in his comment below that it's snowing in Safari too. Great news!]


§297 · November 30, 2006 · Adobe, Ajax, Firefox, JavaScript, Life, Opera, RIA, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · 1 comment ·

Adobe Extends EOL for SVG Viewer (whew!)

[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.]

In an effort of good will, Adobe has modified their plans to End-of-Life their widely used SVG Viewer plugin. The new plan is for support to end January 1, 2008 and for downloads of the viewer to end by January 1, 2009. Looks like all the blog complaints helped. Here's a link to the FAQ (in PDF format, of course! 😉 ).

Some interesting tidbits from the FAQ:

  • The Adobe SVG Viewer is not supported on Windows Vista. Seems like it will work, but the View Source and proprietary audio extensions are known to be broken.
  • Adobe will not be releasing the source for ASV
  • I also appreciate that under the question What products can I use instead of ASV?, Adobe left a link to the http://wiki.svg.org/Viewer_Implementations instead of just trying to push Flex down our throats. They also put in some useful SVG community links at the end of the FAQ.


§283 · October 11, 2006 · Adobe, QuickLinks, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · 4 comments ·

Adobe Announces End-Of-Life for SVG Viewer

[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.


§281 · September 9, 2006 · Adobe, Ajax, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · Comments Off on Adobe Announces End-Of-Life for SVG Viewer ·

Pandora UI – Approaching Perfection

The amazing Pandora continues to refine and improve its UI. Read the rest of this entry ...

§271 · June 18, 2006 · Adobe, Laszlo, Opera, RIA, Software, Technology, Web · 6 comments ·

The Software Wars

Via Linux-Watch, this is the unbelievable Software Wars map now maintained by Steven Hilton.

I've emailed Mr. Hilton to suggest adding Adobe and the W3C as players as well as Microsoft's competitive technologies on those fronts. He states that the map is created using Inkscape, but apparently it's only published in raster form. I'd like to see the map in SVG form so that it could be scalable, have links for each technology to authoritative pages, and eventually it could be searchable when clients catch up.

Anyway, awesome/hilarious/interesting stuff in there!

§270 · June 8, 2006 · Adobe, Linux, Microsoft, QuickLinks, Software, SVG, Technology, Web, Windows · Comments Off on The Software Wars ·

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