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

Re:Bandwith eating useless animations

[m00nun1t]

SVG is a great format for reporting. A much cleaner & potentially more interactive way of displaying complex data than just "static, text and jpgs". Check out the adobe SVG site (http://www.adobe.com/svg), they have some great examples.

And yes, people will use it as a flash wannabe. But that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned - moving from a semi-proprietary format (I know the flash format is *kinda* open) to a standards based format - and XML based, no less.

Re:Bandwith eating useless animations

[jpnews]

"What's wrong with static, text and jpgs only pages?"

Yeah, I agree totally. That's why I read the newspaper.

Re:SVG/Flash

[andrewl6097]

Err...no. From the article:

SVG is similar in scope to Macromedia's proprietary Flash technology: among other things it offers anti-aliased rendering, pattern and gradient fills, sophisticated filter-effects, clipping to arbitrary paths, text and animations.

Re:Bandwith eating useless animations

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing inherently wrong with the technology just because some people will use it for stupid things.

Your post was stupid, but I don't think we should abolish the alphabet because of it.

Some things are better represented in vector graphics and this can be a great tool for that type of thing. Why waste bandwidth transmitting the same map over and over (for different zooms) when you could just get one that is zoomable on the client end? Need a printable diagram ... get one that looks good on screen and also prints well, instead of the horrible blocky printed crap you get with GIF/JPG.

Re:Does anybody actually do anything in SVG?

[mrjb]

It being an open format might help gaining acceptance, as happened with .png (although some popular commercial browsers have flakey support).

It's going to be a long, long struggle against the de facto industry standard, even though projects like sodipodi might help it.

Not everyone understands why following standards is important. The countless broken pages I've seen because somebody decided that using JavaScript was much cooler than using HTML that actually worked... Also, I've seen many companies giving up on flash sites in favor of a simple (but OK looking) HTML-based site that works. I guess the success of the standard depends less on the technology than to the way it is applied.

Re:Bandwith eating useless animations

[big.ears]

I know this is a troll, but I'll bite.

SVG is often takes much less room than the equivalent jpg/png/gif. It has great potential to eliminate the need for a lot of crappy graphics hacks used out there. For example, once easy-to-script graphing libraries are available, you will be able to make svg graphs of real-time data (of web activity, stock prices, etc.) instead of using bitmaps. For much data, this will be much smaller and more aesthetically pleasing. Some large interesting background images etc. will be possible because they are not constrained by the actual size of the image, just the detail. Although svg is being compared to Flash, it is really more proper to think of it as an embeddable .eps or something; I'm not even sure if it handles animation and I don't think it can embed sound events.

Plotting against Microsoft

[NoTildeQuestionMark]

If this SVG patch became fully useable for displaying animation, and then you could convince a really popular animation site (say, HSR) to switch to SVG and recommend a switch to Mozilla for native support... well, then, open source could rule the world.

~

include it in the standard build - when it's done

[wfmcwalter]

SVG is a brilliant standard, and will go a long way to replace the web's millions of opaque flash and shockwave animations (and any number of "diagram" gifs) with something standard and accessible. I'm exceptionally frustrated that I can't realistically author mission-critical sites with SVG as a major (or even the entire) component.

I do, however, pray thay SVG isn't included into standard mozilla (or any other browser) until it's reached maturity (which its page indicates it's pretty far from). I spend too much of my time working around the half-assed CSS implementations of older netscape and IE browsers, and I don't want another decade of worrying about which part of the SVG standard was implemented buggily (sp?) by which version of which browser.

I'm all for beta releases, developer's builds, etc., as the team needs as much feedback from as full an SVG authoring community as it can. But as soon as someone starts authoring sites that depend on the weird vagaries of one browser or another's SVG misimplementation, we'll be going down a painfull bug-for-bug compatibility road. Caveat.

Re:Yet another mozilla advantage over IE

[DarkDust]

and yet people still use IE. As a web designer, I have to ask, "WHY!?"

Simple: because people are fucking lazy ! They get their IE with their Windows, and they are just too lazy to download and install Mozilla or Opera (and they don't care about them since every web designer/developer out there supports IE with their web pages).

If someone visits my homepage with IE the background is replaced with simply white since IE can't handle transparent PNGs and a red warning box is diplayed explaining that IE is just not able to correctly display my homepage (while Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror do).

If more web-pages would do this people would finally think, but this will take some months. MicroSoft gladly doesn't want to update IE any more, so people have to wait for the next Windows to get an update to IE, which is due in 2005 I think. Lots of time which could make a difference if the other browser developers and web designers/developers use that time. And features like good SVG support could really be that difference (and tabs, and blocking of JavaScript pop-ups, and ...).

IE is out of date just now, but people don't care about this, that's the propblem...

Re:Yet another mozilla advantage over IE

[JimDabell]

Because:

• "What's Mozilla?"
• "What's SVG?"
• "But there aren't any pages using SVG that I want to see."
• "Flash is good enough for me."
• "I don't know how to / want to figure out how to install Mozilla."
• "All my favourites/passwords/auto form-fillins are in Internet Explorer."
• "Mozilla looks weird compared with all the other programs on my computer."
• "My employers have already standardized on Internet Explorer."
• "I have to use Internet Explorer to run some .hta programs that I rely on." (or substitute any proprietary technology supported by Internet Explorer).
• "My bank's website doesn't say that I can use Mozilla with it, but they do say I can use Internet Explorer with it."
• "Internet Explorer is already installed on my computer."

I'm a web developer too, and I hate having to deal with Internet Explorer too, but end-user inertia isn't something to dismiss as "people being stupid". You have to give them a reason to care enough to put effort into switching browsers.

SVG test images and SVG apps

[greenrd]

After you've downloaded you can test your new SVG-enabled mozilla build by checking out these galleries (see links on left of page). The thumbnails are ordinary bitmap images but they are linked to SVGs.

Bonus: All the images in the above galleries are Open Source, unless otherwise stated! (Quite literally, because SVG files are like "source code" for a vector image.)

As for SVG creating and editing software, apart from the new dSVG software announced earlier today on Slashdot, we have:

• Apache Batik for all you Java people. This is a fairly mature library (I believe it's based off the CSIRO library), plus sample apps like a viewer, a rasteriser (i.e. convert to gif, jpeg, etc.), a font converter, and a pretty-printer. Quotage: "With Batik, you can manipulate SVG documents anywhere Java is available. You can also use the various Batik modules to generate, manipulate, transcode and search SVG images in your applications or applets." Batik, according to its test suite, supports all of the static SVG specification (i.e. static images) and some of the dynamic specification (i.e. animations and scripting).

  (Get your easy installable RPMs for Batik, and many other Java projects, at jpackage - but good luck finding a download link that works! Batik 1.5 hadn't propagated to all the Sourceforge mirrors when I tried it last night - so try all the US mirrors, it will be on at least one of them. Also, because of the numerous dependencies, it's recommended to use a smart package manager that can automatically resolve dependencies, like apt-get or urpmi.)

• Sodipodi, [screenshots] a GNOME SVG drawing app, currently at version 0.32. It hosts the open source SVG image gallery linked to above.

• For more, including KDE/Konq support for SVG, see this Wiki page

Adobe SVG plug-in not windows-only

[Oniros]

Previously one had to use 3rd party plugins such as that from Adobe, and they only worked on windows.

The Adobe plug-in works fine on MacOS 9 and MacOS X.

There are even betas for Red Hat Linux and Solaris 8, though I have no idea how they fare.

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

Flash format is open

[weinford]

The SWF Format for flash movies is open, anyone can write programs with SWF output. Unfortunetaly I don't have a link at hand for documentation, but there are several programs with SWF output. I think that SWF has a major advantage over SVG, which is file size. The SVG XML format wastes plenty of bandwidth. Don't misunderstand me, XML and SVG are still very nice things, and I'm more than happy to see the news here, just wanted to point these things out.

Re:Flash format is open

[JimDabell]

I think that SWF has a major advantage over SVG, which is file size

A common technique in web development is to serve things in a compressed format. Virtually all browsers support this by transparently decompressing the files after they are recieved. This is part of HTTP (content-encoding).

Binary, already-compressed file formats don't benefit from this, but XML-based formats benefit a great deal. In practice, there won't be much difference in size between SVG and Flash, for the vast majority of people.

Re:Question.

[JimDabell]

Ok SVG is trying to be like Flash in scope, but i don't see anything besides animation. I see nothing about syncing with audio or adding interactive elements.

I don't know why everybody has latched onto SVG == open Flash. SVG is just vector graphics. SMIL is closer to Flash in terms of functionality.

SVG Examples

[wombatmobile]

Website examples?

SVGmaker gallery
Kevin Lindsey
Adobe examples
Andreas Neumann's Vienna GIS example

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:Firebird

[jacksonyee]

SVG is really much, much more than a vector based image format though; it's an entire animation/effects plugin which will work seamlessly with current standards such as XHTML, MathML, CSS, and JavaScript (ECMAScript if you wish to be technical).

Adobe has already placed some very nice demos of embedding SVG within standard web pages. Take a look at some of the things that can be done with it, and you'll quickly see how the SVG standard can

• Replace large graphics with smaller XML code and custom effects
• Replace most of what Flash is: a proprietary language for interactive vector animation. The newer versions of Flash have some very nice extras, but for the most part, SVG can really dig into Macromedia's space if it's adopted by people other than just geeks, and being backed by Adobe is a very good sign.
• Allow accessibility within stylized content. Very few Flash animations on the web nowadays have any type of accessible content.

As far as the extra size in download goes, most people have to download Acrobat Reader to read PDF files, which are very common on the web. If SVG ever achieves the same status, I will be very encouraged as a web designer.

Now, if they would only get X3D in order...

Re:Bandwith eating useless animations

[jd142]

I would assume that just like Mozilla let's you block graphics it will eventually let you turn off svg's. I also just found out about the flash blocker,
Flash Cick to View. It's part of the Firebird extensions but also works great on plain mozilla 1.4 if you get it from the author's page.

With no popups, no ads and no flash, the web is usable.

Open Standards: SVG vs Flash

[gaspyy]

I just want to point out that Flash is an open format - you can download the specs from Macromedia.

I think SVG is very promising, but Flash already is available for 95% of the computers. It's reasonably fast, extremely compact (both the plugin and the .swf files) and its scripting language is quite powerful.

What I don't understand is why so many /.-ers hate it so much. Just because it's not GNU/Flash?

Here Here!!!

[Arbogast_II]

Seems like if the Open Source community would be better off improving Ming .swf file generator. Flash is good, and I don't see the need for adding to the Tower of Babel when a good standard with hooks to Open Source exists.

Why not back Flash and put the effort in improving Open Source support of Flash???

Mozilla has had SVG for ages

[Daa]

As one of the mozilla SVG developers I find it a bit funny that a user creating a freshmeat site to stash their copy of a mozilla svg build is slashdot news. there are daily win32 builds ( from both the trunk and branch SVG trees) posted to ftp.mozilla.org and about monthly linux ( RH7.1) tar.gz. and have been since mozilla 1.0

There is still no agreement to make SVG part of the base GRE install, the current effort is to re-merge the SVG devel branch back to the trunk

dave

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).

SVG is much more than a competitor to Flash

[Paul Bain]

SVG is similar in scope to Flash, but it is a W3 recommendation (i.e. a standard) and uses an open format.

SVG is actually much broader in scope than Flash, PDF, or other proprietary formats, as aptly pointed out by Paul Presod at SVG Open 2003.

Furthermore, the XML project of the Apache Software Founcation is hard at work on Batik, a Java-based toolkit for applications or applets that want to use images in the SVG format.

Animations, line drawings and Mapquest

[jfengel]

It appears that many people want SVG as a kind of Flash replacement. I've been waiting for general SVG acceptance for some time, but not for animations. I want it for maps, charts, and logos.

For example, Mapquest puts out lovely maps in GIF format, but they'd be a lot more useful to me if they were in SVG so that my 600 DPI printer could clearly render all the street names, rather than being locked into a format at 72 DPI. (They could use PDF for that, and I'm not entirely sure why they don't. Too expensive, either computationally or financially?)

Charts and logos would be a lot nicer given in SVG than GIF or JPEG. Again, that's most important when I intend to print it, but it's also useful for something where I'd like to zoom in to get the details.

A pet peeve: I see many corporate documents intended for printing where the logos obviously came from a web site, because they're blocky and ugly. It looks amateurish, but it can be very difficult to get a high-res version of an image. You can't incorporate a PDF into your word-processing documents, and EPS support is very spotty.

So I'm really looking forward to SVG. I just hope there's a button to turn off all the stupid animations. I use Firebird with an extension that requires a separate click to activate a Flash animation. That makes many web pages a far more pleasant experience. Yay SVG, boo Flash/Shockwave.