Google Maps Creator Takes Browsers To The Limit

An anonymous reader writes "Addressing a crowd of developers in Sydney today, Google Maps creator Lars Rasmussen encouraged them to embrace bleeding edge technology in browser software. He cited the example of how Google Maps can command Internet Explorer to use VML (Vector Markup Language by Microsoft) to display a blue line between geographical points, but use a PNG graphic format and a linear description for the Firefox browser." From the article: "Firstly, the Web allows rapid deployment and there is no software for users to install. It's also much easier to make sure code runs on multiple browsers compared with multiple operating systems like Mac OS X and Windows. The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space. This is a bottleneck the engineer sees being removed in future, although he thinks the simplicity of the current Web browsing experience needs to be maintained."

Comments

Hmm...

[rk_cr]

I don't know if I like the idea of taking browsers to the limit when it comes to advertising and pop-ups.

The Benign Giant?

[StreetFire.net]

For all the Slash-Love Google gets here, I think it's important to point out that a company whose sole revenue model is advertising is advocating more control of system resources through the browser. I think Google's business model is too often overlooked here.

oh, so is that why..

[Lord Bitman]

is that why the map never prints correctly in firefox? (I can't be the only one who's noticed this)

Re:SVG (Scaleable Vector Graphics)?

[Metaphorically]

Don't forget the cell phones. SVG Tiny would be a good way to get Google Maps access to a bunch of mobile browsers. If they can do it in VML, then it should be easy to do in SVG. SVG would be a whole lot simpler than the stuff they do for paths with PNGs in Firefox (imo).