SVG is a pretty flexible format. Vector graphic editors often inject a lot of extraneous data to make their job easier. Unfortunately this excess data is just ignored by browsers and from that perspective just looks like bloat. In my opinion, output from editors such as Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator are not quite ready for the web, especially for purposes like clip-art. It's not at all rare to find files up on Open ClipArt with large chunks of the file that are not even used (extraneous gradients, filters, etc). I had an itching to learn a little Python so I used this as an excuse to create a script that would tidy up SVG files: Scour. Read the rest of this entry ...
I think the next next browser war will be about how to integrate online services into the browser itself - search plugins were only the beginning. As more and more people rely on things like GMail, Google Docs, Google Reader, and Google Maps it will only be natural for Google to integrate its online services into its Chrome browser. The question will be whether this is anticompetitive at all in the sense that the "hidden" APIs in Windows were considered anti-competitive. I do think Google will make its server-side hooks open and transparent (because it benefits by having other browsers integrate their services).
Shelley makes the assertion that we are never going to bother with our Twitter past. When I read that, I initially agreed with her: Twitter is a fast-moving medium for short messages whose value fade as time marches on. So in general I won't need to go back and retrieve them. Then today happened and I realized that it's not because we won't want to - it's because it's going to become impossible. Read the rest of this entry ...
Mr. Schepers put together a proposal entitled Referenced Parameter Variables in SVG. This would allow declarative access to parameters from a parent document. Read the rest of this entry ...
Do not adjust your sets, today is CSS Naked Day. I decided to steal Sam Ruby's "naked trucker silhouette" this year. Sam has privately let me know that I cheat by using inline style, but sometimes I want to float my clipart left and sometimes I want to float it right. I guess I should turn those into classes. Will do so for next year. Oh well, Sam cheats too.