IE7 & SVG

Sabot wrote:



More here: http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/main.html

Obviously this is a bit of a pain because SVG is used a lot in my company and IE is our standard browser and yes there is enough of an ROI case to make everyone migrate.

Oops

Sabot wrote:



Adobe are discontinuing support for SVG viewer on Jan 1st 2008, the reason being that SVG support is integrated into FireFox 2.0.

More here: http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/main.html

Obviously this is a bit of a pain because SVG is used a lot in my company and IE is our standard browser and yes there is enough of an ROI case to make everyone migrate.

Their real reason being they bought the company who owns Flash. Hands up if you didn't see this coming, what no hands?

I'm very dissapointed the IE7 will not support SVG. All the other major browsers do...and at a time when Microsoft is rapidly losing ground in the web browser market it would seem a good idea to stay one step ahead. Perhaps you could release it as a hotfix, because vector graphics are picking up, and webmasters may have to block users who are using IE, just like during the browser wars.

If you have to use IE, the Renesis plug-in is very powerful and a good alternative to Adobe SVG viewer. It's also small at around 1 meg. The other option is to guide your users into downloading Opera or Mozilla. Their SVG capability is continuesly being improved and Opera's SVG support is already close to perfect. To support IE users you can use VML. Microsoft is pushing XAML as a new alternative, but I must say, the demo's I've seen so far is SLOW when it comes to initialising the XAML in the browser. Neither will never be a true alternative to SVG though because it's not open standards. For a demo of supporting both types of technologies (SVG and VML), you can have a look at http://www.locateandtrade.com It uses SVG to draw a map of South Africa for Mozilla and Opera users, and uses VML to draw the same maps for IE users. It works well, but VML CSS styling is limited so the code is larger and the map is not as pretty. Come on Microsoft, give us SVG in IE.... please, please pretty please.

While not quite native svg support, there are several efforts going on for cross browser drawing support. A couple which come to mind...
Dojo toolkit now provides a cross browser javascript drawing api
Cumulate Labs provides a cross browser diagramming tool, which converts vml to svg in the backend to provide jpegs/png/pdf.

Moral of the story, If IE team does not care to provide svg support, abstraction layers will emerge which will make this discussion a moot point.
btw, if anyone is still questioning the utility of svg, please see the cumulate labs website to see whats possible....

What's the point of using SVG though? You have developers making graphics?

sfivaz wrote:

and webmasters may have to block users who are using IE, just like during the browser wars.

Those would be some very unwise webmasters, though...

SVG and vml are extremely powerful when combined with the javascript event model. Think about graphical modeling on the web (uml, ER, workflows).  Yes, all this can be done on a thick client, but web adds a degree of collaboration and platform independence (run it from anywhere, on any browser). This is just tip of the iceberg, collaborative ,charts or diagrams, animation,  webbased whiteboarding....and many applications we can't yet think of...
What if we could draw flowcharts or pictures on this very forum to better explain our point....svg/vml can let you do that.

CannotResolveSymbol wrote:

FXEF wrote: CannotResolveSymbol wrote:The Adobe SVG plugin is better than the SVG support in firefox...  and now I can't use it. It doesn't matter that the Adobe plug-in is better. The average joe IE user is not going to install a plug-in to view web graphics, they need to be rendered by the browser. Until IE supports SVG, it would be senseless to use them in webpages. FXEF

Ummm... then what's flash?

A CLOSED format that needs a plug-in (that is not available for all platforms) that most people have installed.

ZippyV wrote:

SVG is not used in phones, tv's, gaming consoles or browsers.

Most mobile phones have SVG out of the box, most others can install it.
Go check the list of phones on http://svg.org

The Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS can run Opera (a browser that does SVG, also on mobiles and the desktop).
As recently mentioned on http://svg.org

Get an idea of all the places SVG is used on http://svg.startpagina.nl

SVG makes up part of the Compound Document Specification. And forms part of the Open Document Standard. MS must stop their stubbornness and show more concern towards their users than their income. Just think of the billions of bollars being waisted in developer hours around the globe to try and incorporate workarounds for IE incompatibilities. IE is loosing ground. People are getting fed up. Developers are turning away from the MS slave mines and we are rioting. We don't want to work in these conditions any more. We want freedom. MS is clinging on to us with white knuckles and we are saying - no more. We are leaving. If you want us back, then stop your stubbonnness and dance to the tune. We have standards to save our precious developer time. Stick to it, or get out of our way. What SVG can do goes beyond what any other internet graphics can do. It's in a different league than the script-kiddy graphics supplied by the alternatives. Some examples: It defines ForeignObject. - currently supported by Firefox 3 (see http://cow.neondragon.net/index.php/1194-Svgforeignobject-In-Firefox-3), and soon enough by Opera, which will open completely new possibilities. It is not tied to the web. You can use SVG for mind blowing presentations, exceptional graphics, and also program it's behaviour. It's not tied to browsers, which makes your work reusable in desktop and mobile applications. With FOP, it can be exported to JPED, PNG, PDF and much more. It's content is bot searchable and the text is selectable. It can be edited with advanced opensource applications such as Inkscape, or with a simple text editor. Good browsers can validate it. Just comparing it to other inferior and closed technologies, shows, that most people who shoot it down does not know what they are talking about.

Jacobus, is your "superior browser" uncapable of handling line breaks?

Look, a line.

And now another one.

Amazing, eh? I know, I know, we do this just to annoy the freedom fighters like you, line breaks are so bourgeoisie...

Vive la Rèvolution! Vive le Rêve!

I found a new site that seems to convert between SVG and VML (I didn't need a plugin for either with the newest versions of each browser), and you can collaborate with people on a different browser. I only tried it with Firefox and IE on a PC, but it's been fun so far:
difftag.com

I can't have linebreaks with Opera in the C9 forum either - I'm using Opera 9.5 alpha though. It has more to do with how the WYSIWYG editor is made. Obviously Opera supports br, p and div just fine.