yes I think you have The red square moves randomly within its free space. You drag the blocks around and try to clear a path for it to get to hole at the bottom right of the screen. But blocks can only move in their longest direction - tall blocks only go up and down, wide blocks only go side to side.
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"Why bother with accessibility? ... Because deep down you know that the web is attractive to people who aren't exactly like you." - Joe Clark
Are Mozilla and IE ever planning to have the Adobe plug-in come with the browser, since it's a standard rather than proprietary? Or will it (could it, even) become implemented directly into the browser, thus avoiding the plug-in in the first place (maybe something like an interpreter, I suppose)?
What I don't understand is if SVG is a "standard" or 'recommendation', why does it require a plug-in made by Adobe? Seems no different than Flash then, except that you don't have to buy a program to make stuff in it. I know, I know, the plug-in is free... for now, but nonetheless, why is it made by Adobe?
I think because it is so similiar to vector artwork -- they just made it XML. If you do an illustration in illustrator and export it to SVG, the code comes out as XML, but it's the same as vector artwork in theory -- a series of mathematical lines that print and display at the highest quality possible. InDesign can do this now too.
That being said, I don't really know why it's a standard... and I agree that I still see the similiarities between it and flash, in regards to the plugin requirements. Can anyone enlighten on this? Seems like another battle between Macromedia and Adobe in the end
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// Art is what you can get away with. <-- Andy Warhol
...:.:::: bradyjfrey.com : htmldog : ::::.:...
No it's not a battle, and certainly not MM vs Adobe - we're not talking about two proprietary platforms competing against each other, we're talking about one proprietary product who's niche is coming to an end, versus an open standard that's only just beginning to make some headway.
Adobe were major players in designing and developing the SVG spec, and they already had the experience and technological know-how to produce a high quality SVG renderer, as bradyj said.
There is a Mozilla SVG project - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/ - they've implemented more of the SVG DOM, but not as much SMIL integration. Eventually you will be able to work with mixed XML documents - XHTML with arbitrary chunks of SVG in it - that kind of stuff. When that happens SVG will really come into its own because you'll be able to use it for design elements with as much ease as GIFs and CSS.
SVG is not bound to a plugin the way Flash inexorably is - but for now, the Adobe plugin is the best way of viewing it.
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"Why bother with accessibility? ... Because deep down you know that the web is attractive to people who aren't exactly like you." - Joe Clark
Last edited by brothercake; 05-30-2004 at 05:44 AM..
...XML-based as opposed to a closed binary format.
Which I didn't think of before, and makes sense. The weakness in flash is it's closed binary format (as well as some of it's benefit) -- and it's mix with the future of standards.
That being said, I just embedded an image in an SVG file to test, and it was almost 40kb smaller than doing it in a flash file. It also gave me the option to 'link' the file as well, making it one up on flash (though I can link to a library set in flash, I cannot change or adjust that link straight code -- has to be directly in the flash document).
SVG and me just might start an interesting little friendship -- thanks Brothercake
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// Art is what you can get away with. <-- Andy Warhol
...:.:::: bradyjfrey.com : htmldog : ::::.:...
Which I didn't think of before, and makes sense. The weakness in flash is it's closed binary format (as well as some of it's benefit) -- and it's mix with the future of standards.
Well exactly - the binary format which is Flash's strength is also its weakness - it's only an advanatage for as long as modems are commonly used to access the internet. But even now, modems are less than half of internet users, and only 20% of all page views. That advantage is waning quickly, and becoming a disadvantage as we see how inaccessible and counter-productive binary formats really are for making web pages, just as Java applets were before Flash came along.
If MM were smart they would be looking at SVG and SMIL very seriously, with a view to their products being able to generate it as an option, even if not by default. I once met their European PR manager, who told me in as many words that this will never happen. Thankfully many at Macromedia are not so short sighted as her, so I don't think we'll be waving goodbye to Flash as a brand, but I do believe the days of Flash as a binary format are numbered.
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"Why bother with accessibility? ... Because deep down you know that the web is attractive to people who aren't exactly like you." - Joe Clark
Last edited by brothercake; 05-30-2004 at 08:42 AM..
No it's not a battle, and certainly not MM vs Adobe - we're not talking about two proprietary platforms competing against each other, we're talking about one proprietary product who's niche is coming to an end, versus an open standard that's only just beginning to make some headway.
Not? I would very much think it is a battle between the two comanies. Adobe has been the major driving force in the SVG project, opposing the Microsoft supported VML, and leading the format specifically towards being a good competitor to Flash. They already have two open but proprietary vector graphics formats, PostScript being textual script based, and PDF being a binary format leaning heavy on their PostScript experiences. SVG is an open communal format instead of proprietary, but it's still very much an Adobe product. Adobe desires to retain their hold as industry leader for vector based formats, so it's only natural that they would try to oppose Flash where they can. However, PostScript and PDF are page description languages, mostly geared towards making static documents that are consistently represented in print media, and are not really optimal for interactivity, multimedia and animation. So, instead they chose to leverage a format that they know they will be one of the best and fastest implementors of, that will get industry wide support since it's an open format where the entire industry be in the development process, but that they will have a very large say in. In other words, they thought SVG was strategically a better choice than rolling their own format. Their influence in SVG can also be seen in that it's not a very nice player in the XML formats scene.
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There is a Mozilla SVG project - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/ - they've implemented more of the SVG DOM, but not as much SMIL integration. Eventually you will be able to work with mixed XML documents - XHTML with arbitrary chunks of SVG in it - that kind of stuff. When that happens SVG will really come into its own because you'll be able to use it for design elements with as much ease as GIFs and CSS.
And they're not the only browser developer working on it... Eventually, we'll have native SVG support in all modern browsers. Whether Microsoft decides to join that group of browsers again, through native support or using their new extension model to seamlessly blend in third party plug-ins remains to be seen. However, SVG is more important as a graphics format than a web format thus far, and that's where we see the major current implementations.
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SVG is not bound to a plugin the way Flash inexorably is - but for now, the Adobe plugin is the best way of viewing it.
Well, it's not bound to a plug-in in a longer perspecitve, but in a perspective of a few years, I see no real break ins possible from other direction, unless Adobe SVG Viewer is overrun by other SVG plug-ins.
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If MM were smart they would be looking at SVG and SMIL very seriously, with a view to their products being able to generate it as an option, even if not by default. I once met their European PR manager, who told me in as many words that this will never happen. Thankfully many at Macromedia are not so short sighted as her, so I don't think we'll be waving goodbye to Flash as a brand, but I do believe the days of Flash as a binary format are numbered.
Flash might be a proprietary format, but it's also an open format. Apple QuickTime has an implementation of the Flash binary format. Microsoft have one for exporting static vector graphics in Flash binary form from Expression 3. I'm sure there are others as well.
Macromedia are already building a good XML support in it, and I believe that we'll see Flash supporting SVG in the not too distant future. I really doubt them taking the direction of changing native formats, but I wouldn't be surprised if they added SVG export capability to Flash, and added SVG rendering capability to the Shockwave/Flash plug-in. The benefits of Flash being a binary format can still be seen in download times compared to SVG on 10MBit, and I believe our patience with page rendering, and thus download times, go down with the change to broadband. However, XML based formats have a large gain from gzip, so maybe gzipped SVG will largely eradicate the benefit of the binary format.
Besides, Flash is not limited to the browser any longer. Flash can be made standalone now, which is something I believe Macromedia will play on as hard as they possibly can, because SVG can't really be made standalone and still be said to still be SVG.
Before you post, read our: 
The red square moves randomly within its free space. You drag the blocks around and try to clear a path for it to get to hole at the bottom right of the screen. But blocks can only move in their longest direction - tall blocks only go up and down, wide blocks only go side to side.
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