{"id":189,"date":"2005-12-06T15:15:33","date_gmt":"2005-12-06T21:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.codedread.com\/?p=189"},"modified":"2005-12-06T15:15:33","modified_gmt":"2005-12-06T21:15:33","slug":"the-svg-roller-coaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/12\/06\/the-svg-roller-coaster\/","title":{"rendered":"The SVG Roller Coaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lot of ups, lot of downs for SVG<\/span> this past month or two. Let's recap them, shall we? I'll go over the major events for SVG deployment in the latter part of 2005.<\/p>\n

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Opera<\/a><\/h2>\n

First, a little over a month ago we got a preview of Opera 9<\/a> and it turns out that their SVG implementation has taken a leap forward to support filters, patterns, scripting, text on path and many advanced SVG Full features. When it is released I believe it will far surpass Firefox's 1.5 implementation. Some folks have told me that Opera is targetting full SVG support and plans to support CDF<\/span> in a big way, which is fantastic news.<\/p>\n

Mozilla Firefox<\/a><\/h2>\n

Which brings us to Firefox 1.5 being released last week with the first native, scriptable SVG implementation in a major browser. While this is genuinely good news<\/em> for SVG as a web standard and reception by newbies to SVG has been favorable (even though confusion results from all the non-conforming SVG content out there), reception by SVG enthusiasts has been a mixed bag. Some people<\/a> even think that Firefox shouldn't have turned on their SVG implementation by default.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, tentative roadmaps<\/a> for Firefox show that Firefox 2 will be based off of the 1.8 branch, while Firefox 3 will be based off the 1.9 trunk. At present, any improvements to SVG support in Firefox are limited to the trunk (text on path, filters). This means that improvements to Mozilla's SVG support (other than perhaps bug fixes) will appear some time in 2007 (over a year away).<\/p>\n

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Adobe<\/a><\/h2>\n

Next, Adobe completes their acquisition of Macromedia and gives us a couple hints at what their stance on SVG<\/a> is:<\/p>\n

How does Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia affect Adobe's support of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)?<\/strong>
\n    Both Adobe and Macromedia have been part of the W3C working group that defined the SVG-t specification. While Flash and Flash Lite have gained critical momentum with customers and partners worldwide, particularly in the fast-growing mobile market, we recognize that both SVG and Flash have had success globally. As a result, Adobe will continue to support the display of popular graphics standards, including SVG-t and Flash, to meet the needs of customers and partners worldwide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

What are Adobe's plans for Flash Player and Adobe Reader?<\/strong>
\n    Our long-term plan is to develop a \"universal client\" by combining PDF, Flash and HTML in a single, integrated runtime. Of course, we will continue delivering the Flash Player as a small, efficient runtime for content and applications on the web, and Adobe Reader for viewing and interacting with PDF documents and forms. The integration of these technologies into a unified framework creates a ubiquitous platform that runs on virtually every device, and dramatically expands the opportunities to create compelling solutions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ok, speculation time (with apologies to John<\/a>):<\/p>\n

The first quote specifically mentions only<\/em> SVG-Tiny. Any answer from Adobe which doesn't even mention<\/em> their Adobe SVG Viewer, which supports SVG-Full and is still currently the best and most popular way to view SVG content in the majority of browsers, can only signal bad news. The mention of SVG-Tiny is significant because Macromedia already supported SVG-T<\/a> so this just tells me they are keeping that support alive within the Flash Lite platform.<\/p>\n

The second quote is interesting because they mention an \"integrated runtime\" support HTML, PDF and Flash, but no mention of SVG. David Mendels<\/a> has confirmed that this \"integrated runtime\" will be a standalone piece of software codenamed Apollo, which means that Adobe is now planning to enter the \"web browser\" market. Will it support SVG?<\/p>\n

A couple more facts: Adobe has been vocal about their frustrations with the pace of the SVG Working Group in the past. Adobe failed to attend the SVG.Open this year.<\/p>\n

So what I read from Adobe is that they are giving up on SVG-Full but are forced to keep SVG-Tiny support around because of its wider deployment in the mobile arena. Not good news for the SVG community if true. It's a blow to the knees of \"SVG on the web\" just as native implementations are starting to show up.<\/p>\n

Now I can't logically fault Adobe for putting their shoulders behind \"Flash\", since it is by far the more mature implementation and by far more widely deployed platform. And they get to control the pace of the specification. Flash is logically a better competitor to Microsoft's XAML next year.<\/p>\n

Kurt<\/a> makes the case that Adobe's exit from the SVG space could be a good thing as it opens the door for browser and other plugin developers to step up. While this is true to a degree, I worry that the space is getting tight.<\/p>\n

I guess it should be made clear: This is really a battle for the future of web client development. Sorry for the excessive drama. Web applications are taking the next step in terms of user interface and people want to make money off of this. There are many sides to the battle: Microsoft with XAML, Adobe with Flash, Sun with Java, W3C with SVG and the Rich Web Client Activity, there's even the open source OpenLaszlo (which is based on Flash, if I understand things). My own belief is that there are too many competitors in this space. The web took off because there was one easy-to-implement standard: HTML.<\/p>\n

Renesis<\/a><\/h2>\n

Finally, we learn from the EvolGrafiX team that their Renesis plugin has been delayed by months<\/a> because team members have quit. Furthermore it sounds like if the plugin is ever actually released, it will only support SVG 1.2 Mobile<\/a>. I don't know... GoSVG.net has been online for over seven months<\/em> and aside from a (rather impressive) video we haven't seen anything from them. Is it vaporware? It sounds like<\/a> even their presentation at SVG.Open didn't have an actual demo of their software... I think Renesis Pre-Alpha should be released, just to give the people some faith - it doesn't need to be a \"Flash-Killer\" at this point.<\/p>\n

Final Words<\/h2>\n

What I'd really like to see is some upfront show of corporate support on some major sites and here are my suggestions:<\/p>\n

1) Google Maps<\/a> should now start using SVG for Mozilla and Opera in the same way they are using VML<\/span> for Internet Explorer. Send the path data and let Firefox 1.5 and Opera 8 render it.<\/p>\n

2) Flickr<\/a> should create Image Badges<\/a> in SVG.<\/p>\n

Support for SVG from Google and Yahoo! would be a tremendous vote for SVG's continued existence on the web - and that would be a nice Christmas present. I'll put it on my list to Santa...<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lot of ups, lot of downs for SVG this past month or two. Let’s recap them, shall we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,35,39,41,25,46,11,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adobe","category-firefox","category-laszlo","category-opera","category-software","category-svg","category-technology","category-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}