Mozilla Gets (Beta) Native SVG support

Rushuru writes "Mozilla is getting a beta native SVG support. Previously one had to use 3rd party plugins such as that from Adobe, and they only worked on windows. SVG is similar in scope to Flash, but it is a W3 recommendation (i.e. a standard) and uses an open format. The project page has more info."

Comments

Native vs. non-native SVG

[KasparS]

(1) While I agree with some
posters that there is a danger of distributing unfinishend
implementations, having a NATIVE SVG is a real breakthrough though.
Quote: "Mozilla can handle documents that contain SVG, MathML, XHTML,
SMIL, etc. all mixed together in the same 'compound' document.... ".
Means for instance that you can simply add a little vector graphic INTO
your XHTML code instead of importing png. Also means that the same
DOM/Ecma interface can be used to program dynamic websites, or that you
can dynamically transform XML contents into XHTML/SVG with XSLT
client-side on the fly...

(2) On another note: Adobe's Plug-in version 6.0 BETA is available. And
it does not crash Mozilla 1.4 (Win2k) when embedded in HTML. In order
to install it with Mozilla (tested with Moz 1.4/Win2k) you must copy
the 2 files from:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\SVG Viewer 6.0\Plugins\*
to c:\Program Files\Mozilla.org\Mozilla\Plugins\ Did not see any Unix
version :(

http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/beta.html

PS: Plugin v3.0 kills Moz 1.4 (and others if you don't use iframes)

(3) There are some really cool SVG sites. My favorites:

http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/
(cool examples)

http://www.protocol7.com/svg-wiki/
(documentation about obscuret extensions,
i.e. shows how to get/post to URLS from within SVG ...)
- K

Re:At last!

[snillfisk]

Until now, I've had to say you can use IE, then get an addon from Adobe. "What? Why doesn't MS support this SVG thing natively? What if Adobe decides to drop support for SVG; then what happens? ..."

Sorrowly, this has already happened; Adobe hasn't updated their plugin since 2001 and is lacking support for everything newer than the 1.0 standard. The most promising plugin at the moment is with no doubt the Corel SVG Viewer which looks and handles really neat. We've tried the mozilla native support in earlier editions (mainly about ~3 months ago) and the implementation was currently very lacking of needed features.

One point I would like to make; the first plugin (or browser) to support the upcoming SVG 1.2 standard is going to get a quite instant userbase, the interest for SVG is only growing -- something which SVG Open just showed (I was a coauthor for one of the papers, Distributed GML Management with SVG Tools).