I haven't really given a good 'SVG News Digest' in well over a year, but there was enough recent news that I thought I should post a little bit about what's going on in the Scalable Vector Graphics world. Fair warning: This blog post is long, I probably should have spread it over 4-5 days worth of blogging, but I lose patience when queuing up posts... Read the rest of this entry ...

§454 · April 16, 2008 · Software, SVG, Technology, Web · 4 comments · Tags: , , , ,


The latest WebKit nightly now has a decent amount of SVG+SMIL (animation) coverage. By my old school grading system, that gives WebKit a solid 'B' grade in terms of SVG support (75%). This is what I was talking about a few weeks ago and I'm quite happy to see it happen! If they cleaned up their regressions from a few weeks ago (some problems with SVG patterns, I believe), they might even crest 80%.

§452 · April 15, 2008 · Apple, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · Comments Off on WebKit Nightly: Now Smiling · Tags: , , ,


After the announcement that the Apple developers have turned on their SMIL support in order to pass Acid3 test, I was excited enough to download the MacOS nightly and run through the SVG animation test suite. I was pretty disappointed. Read the rest of this entry ...

§445 · March 26, 2008 · Opera, Safari, Software, Technology, Web · 18 comments · Tags: , , , , ,


WebKit and Opera are really scrambling to be the first browser to fully pass Acid 3. First, Opera claimed they were at 100/100 in a private build, then Ian corrected the test (based on feedback from Apple developers), presumably knocking Opera back to 99/100. And just now, the WebKit guys have turned on SVG Animation (SMIL) in their nightly builds, putting them also at 99/100. This was a surprise to me, since I had heard that their SMIL implementation was not ready for prime-time, so to speak. Oh well, this is great - now we have a second browser implementing SMIL natively and we can truly start pushing for interoperable solutions.

What does it mean for Apple and Opera fans? Probably a lot. What does it mean for web standardistas? Apple and Opera care (more?). What does this all actually mean for web developers at the moment? Not a single thing. Oh well, time to tally up my own similarly-meaningless SVG support score...

[Update 10:25 PM CST: Apple did it. They are the first to achieve 100/100 in Acid3 with a publicly downloadable browser (even if it is only for MacOS)]

§444 · March 26, 2008 · Software, SVG, Technology, Web · 7 comments · Tags: , , , ,


David Leunen has released a new JavaScript library to fake SMIL for modern browsers that do not yet support declarative animation (Firefox 3.0- and Safari 3.0-). The nice thing about this is that it uses existing standards, so that when Mozilla and WebKit finally implement SMIL, this script will avoid executing. On that day, suddenly animations will become less processor-intensive. I'm all about progressive enhancement, but I'm also not above occasionally faking it a little to experiment with cool features. Read the rest of this entry ...

§440 · March 16, 2008 · JavaScript, RIA, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · 4 comments · Tags: , ,