Vector Graphics Lead Wish List For Future Browsers

Coach Wei writes "Community voting results and a summary report have been published from OpenAjax Alliance's recent "community wishlist for future browsers" effort. When the voting closed on July 13th, 222 people participated in this open community initiative, with 143 people voted, 55 feature requests being written up, and contribution from many industry leaders. The voting indentified and prioritized 37 features. The top 10 are related to vector graphics, security, performance, layout, rich text editing, Comet, audio and video. Among all the feature requests, 2D Drawing/Vector Graphics is clearly the most desired feature by the community. It received most votes (110 people voted for it), and highest total score (over 10% higher than the second feature request). Looks like that it is time for all browsers, in particular, IE, to seriously consider supporting standards-based vector graphics."

Comments

"Community" ?

[qoncept]

I don't think the OpenAjax Alliance's poll reaches quite what would constitute the "web browser users" community. I'm also trying to figure out what the "particularly Internet Explorer" comment meant. Not that I read the article..

Re:"Community" ?

[AKAImBatman]

Internet Explorer is the only major browser to NOT implement SVG and Canvas. Which is a major failure on Microsoft's part. One might almost say that they're intentionally trying to prevent the adoption of standards that could replace their proprietary APIs like VML and ActiveX. Almost, anyway. It's not like Microsoft has a history of not implementing the DOM standards or anything.

(*Hint!* That was sarcasm. Microsoft fails miserably at implementing the DOM2 standards.)

Re:"Community" ?

[mdm-adph]

I'm also trying to figure out what the "particularly Internet Explorer" comment meant. Not that I read the article..

I'd assume it's a stab at IE's very poor Canvas graphics support (something I've heard about). I don't work with graphics so I wouldn't know for sure, however.

Re:"Community" ?

[Culture20]

But all 222 "web browser users" worldwide voted. Unless someone voted twice.

Re:"Community" ?

[bunratty]

I don't think the poll was aimed at browser users. It was aimed at web developers, in particular, Ajax developers who are creating new, interactive websites.

Re:"Community" ?

[IdahoEv]

Internet Explorer is the only major browser to NOT implement <insert ANY interesting/useful non-proprietary feature or open standard here>

There, fixed that for you. The only thing MS is ever first on are the things that can't be implemented in any other browser because MS owns the technology.

Re:"Community" ?

[maxume]

Except for AJAX...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_support

I mean, they didn't come up with the cute name, but they did package the technology first.

Re:"Community" ?

[Midnight Thunder]

I mean, they didn't come up with the cute name, but they did package the technology first.

True, but their version is based on ActiveX, while everyone else used XMLHttpRequest. See here: http://www.w3schools.com/Ajax/ajax_browsers.asp

Re:"Community" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Afaik, VML is not proprietary, see:
http://www.w3.org/Submission/1998/08/vmlreq
Probably, the competing browser-builders were not ready to implement it at that time and then came SVG.

Re:"Community" ?

[maxume]

Yes, because they created it before XMLHttpRequest ever existed as a standard. They took a shot at implementing XMLHttpRequest for IE7 but apparently botched it a bit.

The point is, Microsoft created the technology and then it ended up in other browsers.

Re:"Community" ?

[jsebrech]

Exactly, it was pretty visible inside of the web app development community. They didn't even expect more than 150 responses, so the number of votes is a resounding success.

Re:"Community" ?

[Sleepy]

That's splitting hairs on an irrelevant point.
Who was first? Microsoft.

It doesn't matter if it was done in ActiveX, as a DLL, or as pat of the "kernel".

At the time it actually made sense to do it in ActiveX... it could be disabled if installations wanted to do so.

What made Ajax at the time useless was only Microsoft was supporting it... so some Intranets could take advantage of it, but not the wider web.

Once Mozilla supported it, things got better... except we had to wait for abstraction Javascript libraries, because neither version was compatible.

Not a big fan of Microsoft at all, but they get credit here. Of course, you could also point out it was an "obvious" enhancement, and a dying Netscape was ill-equipped to match the feature even if they wanted to.

Re:"Community" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft invented XMLHttpRequest as an ActiveX object, which is technically not a native part of the browser. The innovation that allowed AJAX to become popular was the implementation of XMLHttpRequest natively in the browser, free of any specific object architecture. Only then could XMLHttpRequest work on a wide variety of browsers and platforms.

      My understanding is that Internet Explorer still doesn't have a true native implementation of XMLHttpRequest. Instead, it uses a hack that simply wraps the preexisting XMLHttpRequest ActiveX object to make it look native from the script programmer's point of view.

Re:"Community" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the actual XMLHttpRequest() object was made by Mozilla. On IE, you have to use ActiveX to get to it.

Re:"Community" ?

[HTH NE1]

Microsoft fails miserably at implementing the DOM2 standards.

Microsoft fails miserably at implementing the HTTP standards! See their treatment of files served as text/plain.

Re:"Community" ?

[cgranade]

Yes, Microsoft was first on something, as they have been with many things. That doesn't change the fact, though, that when it comes to following other people's ideas and implementing standards, Microsoft's policy seems to be a firm "no." Web developers better than I could give you a very long list of standards unsupported by MS. My pet peeve is XHTML. Yes, I know, they say they support it, but only if you send the wrong MIME type. That means that other browsers will try to render it as HTML (no X) and will choke on it. Because of that, you have to write server-side code to detect user agents and change the MIME type to match. Very, very frustrating.

Re:"Community" ?

[XHIIHIIHX]

Their XMLHttpRequest object still doesn't work when state = 3 and they don't have a data uri. In short, it sucks.

Re:"Community" ?

[Annymouse Cowherd]

and lack of SVG support

Re:"Community" ?

[cheater512]

What canvas support? :P

Re:"Community" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is still that they did it in a non-standard way. Is it really that hard to accept?

Re:"Community" ?

[kabz]

I believe the original driver behind the AJAX features was a web-based Outlook mail client.

Little did they know that they had opened the door to all the cool things we have today like Google Mail, Google Docs, Google News, Google Labs Search, Google Notebook, Google Base, MS Live Mesh ... err ;-)

I think we owe MS a huge debt of gratitude for making the web browser-based clients possible, and for most practical purposes, freeing us from monolithic PC-based software.

Re:"Community" ?

[clang_jangle]

Yes, Microsoft was first on something, as they have been with many things.[CITATION NEEDED]

Re:"Community" ?

[the_womble]

It is not in MS's interest to implement SVG. They want people to use Silverlight for what SCG is used for.

The vector graphics in Silverlight is similar enough to SVG to be converted by a relatively simple Javascript.

Re:"Community" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pa-leeze. Anyone could easily load data using invisible frames to perform similar functionality years before the cute "AJAX" came along (I know I did.)

Re:"Community" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

One might almost say that they're intentionally trying to prevent the adoption of standards that could replace their proprietary APIs like VML and ActiveX.

... or could it be this little baby?

Re:"Community" ?

[Keeper Of Keys]

There was no standard! In order to implement it at all, they had to do it "in a non-standard way".

When Microsoft were trying to take over the browser market, they didn't just leverage their desktop monopoly, they innovated. Netscape were already doing the same. Often their ideas didn't mesh, which meant headaches for developers, but they also copied each other's ideas. The first browser war made the web the multimedia platform it is today.

Re:"Community" ?

[Rysc]

VML was never adopted as a standard. It was proposed, considered and rejected. SVG is a "better VML" and actually has wide industry support.

Microsoft might be considered a pioneer for adding VML support early, except that now they are not keeping up by adding SVG support even when it's clearly needed. Oh, and VML? Gone in IE8.

As another poster said, they're trying to force people in to silverlight.

Re:"Community" ?

[aliquis]

Cool, so all one need to do to look IE users out are to use AJAX with XMLHttpRequest? Nice.

Re:"Community" ?

[RAMMS EIN]

``The point is, Microsoft created the technology and then it ended up in other browsers.''

No. They created something based on ActiveX.

Other browsers created a similar feature, which did pretty much exactly the same, but without ActiveX.

The feature that ended up in other browsers was not the same as the one Microsoft invented. The important difference between the two is that Microsoft's depends on Microsoft's proprietary ActiveX technology. This means AJAX is _not_ a non-proprietary innovation from Microsoft. What Microsoft came up with was proprietary. What ended up in other browsers was a knock-off with the proprietary lock-in parts replaced.

AJAX is not a case of Microsoft coming up with something that went on to become a standard. It's a case of Microsoft trying to lock people into their proprietary platform, and failing. The features were duplicated by the competition, and libraries were written that work with both Microsoft's and the rest of the world's implementation.

Now, there are actually examples of Microsoft creating standards. And I mean standards that don't lock you into their platform. AJAX is just not one of them.

Re:"Community" ?

[maxume]

Unless Opera, Firefox and Safari somehow share implementation code, you are just wackety wackety hair splitting.

Damn graphic artists...

[mdm-adph]

...keep your art out of my code (and off my lawn)!

Native JSON should clearly be at the top of this list. I call shenanigans.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[zbend]

How do you have native JSON? I thought JSON was basicly just using javascript arrays for ajax transfers instead of xml, am I missing something?

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[Joebert]

Native JSON should clearly be at the top of this list.

Huh ?!

I could have sworn JSON was adopted as a method of transfering data from server to client instead of XML because JS Object Notation was already something native to browsers.

I only have about 5 years of experience with Javascript, so I could be wrong.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[mdm-adph]

It hasn't been adopted officially, hence the use of "eval()" to turn it into a JSON object. Otherwise, it's still just a string. :(

I'm gussing "Native JSON" would be able to accept a string from the server, automatically turning it into a JS object.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[mdm-adph]

I'm pretty sure that most browsers today (that I'm aware of) still have to convert the JSON objects back and forth into strings to communicate with the server.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[Joebert]

I don't know, something about this still sounds redundant.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[moderatorrater]

But it's implemented everywhere and quite easily. JSON is, by definition, native javascript code, the only part that gets added is the validation to ensure that no other code sneaks in at the same time. Asking for native JSON support in javascript is like asking for native array support in C.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[mdm-adph]

Trust me, that's why it's called JavaScript object "notation" -- it's not actually a JavaScript object. You still have the extra step of converting it out of string form when you get it from the server.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[Carewolf]

Browser don't use JSON. If web-application developers use JSON they are only converting back and forth to protect themselves from JavaScript injections.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[snoyberg]

I hope, for your users' sake, you don't actually parse JSON that way. If you don't believe me, just wait til a site passes you the JSON string "alert('P0wned!')"

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[snoyberg]

Well, you could have a json function which does that job of eval, only validating in the process. That would probably speed up code significantly.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[Malevolyn]

The IS native array support in C. Except it's not the type of array you're talking about, so nevermind.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[multipartmixed]

Of course you have to convert it to/from strings, duh, you can't put an abstract concept like an object on a wire and send it across the internet. So we represent the object some other way. A string is a perfectly fine way.

And -- Oh -- it's a string which which contains a JavaScript object literal. Now, what do you call the language subset which defines the string appearance of a Javascript object literal? JavaScript Object Notation seems pretty damned reasonable.

Don't like calling eval() to parse the object literal? Why not? It's an object literal; to turn ANY piece of source code (and that's what it is, source code for an object) you need to run a parser over it. It turns out that eval() is a pretty damned good JavaScript parser.

You could, if you we were so inclined, parse the JavaScript yourself. And, in fact, if you only wanted to support objects -- not the whole JavaScript language -- you might want to only parse a limited subset of JavaScript, which some freaky has guy (who works at Yahoo) has decided to call JSON.

Now, what's the best way to write a limited-function parser in JavaScript, and still have it be really fast?

Use native constructs.

Hmm, but does JavaScript have any native constructs which allow us to easily build parsers which understand small regular grammars? Hint: there's a reason they're called regular expressions.

So, the current common/secure technique is to use a regexp parser to validate the input to eval(), because that's the fastest way (two calls, both into native code).

Now, how the hell can we MAKE these objects? Well, it's pretty easy from JavaScript; the .toSource() method and/or uneval calls work pretty good.

So, we now have a general-purpose way to serialize/deserialize javascript objects into something we can send over a network. If you wanted to, that's enough to start a cult and try to build a career around. You could even describe it really complicatedly (like on http://www.json.org/). Or, you could build a compilcated object/class hierarchy around it, like this guy http://www.devpro.it/JSON/files/JSON-js.html -- I suppose you could even come up with something as complicated as DCOM or CORBA if you were really bored.

But it's still nothing more than winging JavaScript source code around the internet, and validating it somehow [regexp] if you don't trust its contents.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[pavon]

I'm not a web-programming guru either but from what I understand, that is exactly the problem - browsers are just reusing their JS engine to interpret the JSON file, which means that malicious folks could put additional javascript into the "JSON" file, and it will be interpreted when it shouldn't be. Using JSON today is akin to not validating your input before passing it to the shell or an SQL interpreter (except on the client side).

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[riceboy50]

Then I'd know it was a n00b for sure since the correct veribage is pwnd!

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[mdm-adph]

Uh... thanks?

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[jsebrech]

Parsing a json file using eval is not a safe practice, so you need to surround it with a bunch of regular expression checks that verify that the json string doesn't contain malicious code. This takes up quite a bit of time, especially for large json strings, so the performance is not as good as you'd hope for (though still much better than xml).

What is asked for by "native json" is a natively implemented browser function that will decode a json string into a javascript object securely without requiring javascript-based security checks first. The fact that it doesn't need to do everything eval does should also provide quite a nice performance boost.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pwnt!

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[cgranade]

Native to browsers in the sense that you can call "eval()" on an string sent by an untrusted party over an unencrypted connection. Now, with the popularity of JSON, I've seen JavaScript-based JSON parsers that don't use eval and thus are (ideally) immune to code-injection attacks. If browsers were to implement such sandboxed parsers, then JSON would have a real advantage over XML in that it fits into the JavaScript language nicely, while still retaining security.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[metamatic]

Of course, the entire point of JSON was that it was just JavaScript, so you could evaluate it to get at the values.

If you're concerned about the security of doing so, maybe you should have used XML, which already has native support in JavaScript in browsers.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[Myen]

Completely irrelevant, but thought it was annoying...

uneval() output (from Firefox 3 at least) isn't, strictly speaking, JSON. It hasn't got quotes around the names.

Only sayin' because my old uneval output can't be used for the new JSON based replacement :(

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[zobier]

IMO JSON is broken if it doesn't accept identifiers, strings or numbers as property names or it doesn't accept single-quoted strings i.e. valid JavaScript object literal syntax. Yes I have RTFRFC, but if you're going to call it JSON then it should follow ECMA-262.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Native to browsers in the sense that you can call "eval()" on an string sent by an untrusted party over an unencrypted connection.

Since multiple people mentioned it, I guess there should be something to it, but why is there a problem?
The eval() can hardly do anything worse than the calling JavaScript, and the calling JavaScript too comes from an untrusted party over an unencrypted connection. So to me it seems the only way to avoid this is to use an encrypted and authenticated connection.

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[Anonymous Coward]

geek

Re:Damn graphic artists...

[mdm-adph]

Dear god no. That was the _most_ basic example I was giving.

we'll vector you right up

[spazdor]

Guys, guys.
We've got it covered. Just close your eyes, bend over, and wait for Silverlight.

Re:we'll vector you right up

[Joebert]

Just close your eyes, bend over, and wait for Silverlight.

That has inspired me to install a traffic signal over my headboard.

Re:we'll vector you right up

[Anonymous Coward]

For Open Source guys,
JavaFX will cover all your needs... and you'll not need to bend over. It may be late but I think it will be a real Internet Tsunami. Time will tell.

Re:we'll vector you right up

[macbigot]

You forgot, "...and grab your ankles..."

You Microsoft guys are always forgetting important user interface guidelines.

Vector graphics can't work

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Where I work we're constantly scaling our web software needs to fit the situation, and I have yet to be able to cross a vector and a scalar!
<ducks>

Re:Vector graphics can't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Here I was trying to dot a vector and a scalar thinking I had the biggest problem in the world! You certainly do, sir!

Re:Vector graphics can't work

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you get when you cross an elephant and a grape?

Elephant Grape sin(theta)

SVG ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tought SVG is already implemented in most modern browsers...

Re:SVG ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tought SVG is already implemented in most modern browsers...

yeh and I tought I taw a puddy tat

Isn't that called VRML?

[mmell]

8^O

Re:Isn't that called VRML?

[Svet-Am]

exactly what I was thinking when I read TFA. We've already been here before and the industry decided that it didn't want vector rendering of the web.

Re:Isn't that called VRML?

[Joebert]

the industry decided that it didn't want vector rendering of the web

That was when vector artists had artistic abilities of a rubber stamp.

Alot has changed since then.

Re:Isn't that called VRML?

[Gilmoure]

Frog in a Blender wasn't art?

yea. ajax. it has given us so much

[unity100]

and also openajax alliance constitutes what we call 'browser users' on the internet ...

that alliance should try to make ajax actually something of use to the internet, rather than trying to shape future browsers to their preference by staging limited scope polls and then pushing it as browser community's preferences.

or, we can just kill all buzzword crowd and get it over with.

"Override Back Button Event"???

[PontifexPrimus]

Ok, I'm normally a peaceful person, but if someone invents a way to trap me on a page and disable my back button I'll hunt that guy down and kill him. Seriously. I understand that AJAX doesn't play well with the back button, but if this cancellation of functionality is implemented so that every site can deploy it easily it will break the web as we know it.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait until the new standard takes over then, I refer you to this comment:

http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=622185&cid=24291617

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

Do a lot of web development? This is one feature I would love -- users can completely destroy how a web app works just by clicking on the back button and asking "where'd all my data go?"

And nothing "traps" you in a page; just close the tab.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Dr_Banzai]

That's what the Super Back Button is for.

This could be the start of the back button arms race...

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[repvik]

And nothing "traps" you in a page; just close the tab.

That kills the browsing history of that tab. Thank you very much for trapping me on that page.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Overzeetop]

As an end user and a project manager, I'd have to ask you why your code doesn't allow such a possibility. Not that I don't understand the added effort and difficulties (okay, technically, I don't; I don't program for the web), and it would suck to have to make it all work properly, but that's kinda your job.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[urcreepyneighbor]

<sarcasm>Well, you see... our new, half-assed, pieced-together technology will only properly work if we force users to use it the way we want. Remember: it's OUR content, so we get to determine how the USERS use it!</sarcasm>

<serious>UseIt.com.</serious>

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Mongoose Disciple]

Do a lot of web development? This is one feature I would love -- users can completely destroy how a web app works just by clicking on the back button and asking "where'd all my data go?"

They sure can. This might put the onus on you as the web developer to build a smarter app. Or to not build that particular as a web browser app at all. You've got options, and it's not like the back button is a new feature that's surprised you and thrown off your assumptions.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[fracai]

Seems like instead of a trap there needs to be a mechanism to override the back action and deal with it as appropriate. Or is that what was originally meant by "trap"?

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

Well, if you're using a decently made web app it's going to have opened in its own personal tab/window anyway. No history concerns that way.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

There kinda is -- you hook into the "onunload" event on a web page, prompting the user with a dialog. It's how web apps like Meebo.com handle this problem.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

If Iran develops Nuclear Back Button technology, the terrorists win.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

Unfortunately, there's very little you can do in the situation about an application's intelligence -- the web browser is basically your development environment for web apps (and one that wasn't originally intended to be such), and things like the back button are (almost) unavoidable frustrations.

And do you honestly think I'm choosing the web as a platform? It's what I'm told to do, so I do it. :P

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[repvik]

Well, if you're using a decently made web app it's going to have opened in its own personal tab/window anyway. No history concerns that way.

If a web-app is well made, all is well. But this is going to be abused by those too lazy to make a good webapp. Anyway, if a webapp opens in a new window, will it ever have a history to go "back" to? Will the back-button even be enabled in that case?

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[bberens]

I don't consider any webapp that opens its own special window to be decently made. The window I open you in should be quite sufficient tyvm.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[ShieldW0lf]

Would seem to me that both camps can be made happy by allowing the developers to indicate that "THIS" page should not be added to the browser history.

So, if the user goes to the home page, then goes to a "view product" page, then goes through a purchasing process, you could suppress the pages involved in the purchasing process from being added to the history. If the user hits the back button half way through making a purchase, it would take them back to the "view product" page. If they then hit "forward", it would do nothing, because the "view product" page is the most recent entry.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

Anyway, if a webapp opens in a new window, will it ever have a history to go "back" to? Will the back-button even be enabled in that case?

You make a good point (using a new window is how I do things). I guess I was just playing Devil's Advocate -- to be honest, I wouldn't even need this feature. :P

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Jeffrey Baker]

If you consider yourself a "web developer" and don't know how to manipulate the URI fragment to make the back button work with AJAX, then you should just quit right now and become a politician or a lawyer or something. The back button is fundamental and all AJAX applications should work with it.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[CopaceticOpus]

Overriding the back button would lead to evil behavior on some websites. I think what would be better is to have a way to register "the page has advanced" events with the browser when dynamic content is loaded. In other words, the back/forward buttons could be tied to application states that aren't necessarily a result of a complete page load. This would be like the YUI Browser History Manager, but with a simpler set up and no libraries to include.

The only problem is that sites could load up the application history with 500 fake events, and thus render the back button useless. Still, they can probably already do this using the same methods as the Browser History Manager uses, so the point may already be moot.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[CastrTroy]

We must not allow a Back Button gap!

On a more serious note, wouldn't it be nice to be able to attach a confirm box to the back button, which allows the user to still go back if they desire, yet lets them know that they may lose the data within the ajax app?

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

Do you like all system applications to open in the same window, too?

What if you need to get information from another web page to use in the application page?

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[jlarocco]

Do a lot of web development? This is one feature I would love -- users can completely destroy how a web app works just by clicking on the back button and asking "where'd all my data go?"

You mean one of the fundamental features of every web browser ever created breaks your web app? Maybe that's a hint...

If anything like that ever gets added to Konqueror or Firefox I'll release a patch disabling the "feature" just out of basic principle.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Mongoose Disciple]

I do web development work. I'm not completely talking out my ass here. You do have some options.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

Hey, that's a bit harsh, don't you think? I develop for the web. Just because I don't use every trick of the trade, you shouldn't try to call me names (lawyer).

Should I not call you a "car driver" because you can't do the Nurburgring in 8 minutes? No, because that would be silly.

(Or, like has been said elsewhere, just open a web app in a new window/tab. Problem solved.)

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

Never said you were. ;)

And yes, you can open an app in a new window. No history problems.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[pjt33]

Then I right-click the link to the webapp and choose "Open in new window". In fact, as a browser user, the number one feature I'd like to add is an item in that popup menu: "Open in this tab".

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[amRadioHed]

No, if it's decently made then it will open in the my browser window, or a new tab if I chose. Gmail and google maps are both decently made I think and they don't refuse to open in the current tab. They don't disable my back button either.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

There's actually a feature in the TabMixPlus extension for Firefox that allows you to force this behavior. Try it out!

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[GuldKalle]

Well, the back-button is not gonna go away, so you might just have to make your web-app work with it. Look at how other web-apps are doing it. set location.hash to something different every time you go to a new logical page, and set an onunload-event to save the data when users are leaving the page. That way you can use the back-button as a natural part of your app, instead of providing ugly, self-made buttons to confuse your users.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

Aye, but isn't there the possibility of data loss if you go back in the history?

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[XnavxeMiyyep]

Yes, if only javascript had some way to make functions execute on the unloading of a page!

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[thrillseeker]

consistently.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[HTH NE1]

Then there's those that expect to have been opened in a new window, so when they're opened in a tab they resize the whole browser window, affecting all your tabs(*).

How about instead of outright disabling the Back button, just Dark-Age your domain, recording no history until you leave the domain. Back will take you to the site you visited prior and you haven't wasted memory recording history that would just screw up the app if re-accessed. Open a link to elsewhere and history resumes.

(*) When I left a particular web design company, the last thing the boss requested I create was a frameset that was designed to present a page in a frame never larger than 640x480 (today it would have been Javascript to resize the browser window). Plain black frames above, below, and on both sides. I had resisted doing it before and warned that it was not a good idea. The boss used it anyway... on the company's own site. I think they were out of business long before they lost their domain 1.75 years later.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, you can convince AJAX to play nice with the back button by using anchor links (#whatever) that don't make the browser refresh but change the URL so it can be copy-and-pasted and detected by Javascript. Plus you can use them to allow backspace and deep-linking for flash sites, too.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[zoogies]

Parent is not flamebait. Sheesh.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Culture20]

As an end user and a project manager, I'd have to ask you why your code doesn't allow such a possibility.

Because web browsers were not intended to be application mediums. To a web app, the back button is like allowing a user of a standard executable to manually page and free memory on command in the OS while the app is running. Wild weird things are the result. Or for a turing machine example, it's like allowing a user to change tapes mid-stream. States break.

That said, web pages should not dictate browser menu functions. You want to be sure your app runs a certain way? Program with embedded circuitry in a specialized device, not with machine code on a general computer or with markup code on a web browser. Of course, even with the embedded circuitry, you're subject to the vagaries of physics.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

users can completely destroy how a web app works just by clicking on the back button and asking "where'd all my data go?"

That is the hallmark of a crappy web app.

Look, I know web coders aren't necessarily the brightest chickens in the lemon tree, but if I can make a back-button-robust web app, they should be able to.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[amRadioHed]

I can't say for sure. I've never seen it happen. The app gives you a warning when trying to leave a page if there is a network operation in progress.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[drinkypoo]

The problem is the back button causes a very very very large break in the sanity of web applications. You can kiss a consistent state goodbye.

I know I'm contradicting my sig, but I want to explain why you are wrong.

Session state is maintained on the server, not the client.

If you trust the client to provide you valid data about the state of the application, you are very stupid. This is how people get owned.

As such, you should remember what the user was doing, and if they open the application again, return them to where they were.

Disabling the back button is wrong. If your application cannot handle me leaving it any any time gracefully, it is a piece of shit. And if you absolutely must have control of my system, well, that's why we have xulrunner. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the web is probably not even the best way to deliver an application of that nature, but you could argue that one back and forth all day - my main argument is that users expect web pages to behave in a certain way.

The real issue here is that a webpage is not a standalone application, and you run into problems like these when you try to make it one. Webpages are forms, like screens on mainframes, and are request-oriented. Your web applications should be the same.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[drinkypoo]

On one hand, you have a point. On the other hand, anyone who would hire you to write an AJAX application when you can't do this is not competent to hire you (typical, though.) This is more like not calling you a car driver because you don't know how to parallel park.

P.S. If you open a new window, and I don't need to use your site, I will close the window and never return. I prefer to avoid incompetents who think they should control what my browser does. Thank you.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[drinkypoo]

The thing is that it's actually super-easy to avoid revisiting these pages ever becoming a problem, it's called session management and it's provided by basically every dynamic website development environment. If the user submits a form that your session tracking indicates they shouldn't be submitting, just ignore it and send them to a menu page. Ta-Da! (If the user hits the back button, then hits the forward button, you should do the right thing, and display the correct page.)

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[jasonwea]

I've found TargetKiller to be quite useful. I also have a disliking of pages that insist on opening things in new tabs. It's my browser after all.

A sibling post mentioned TabMixPlus. I have avoided this addon since the mid Fx 2.x days as it has become rather bloaty for my liking. TargetKiller and Focus Last Selected Tab add all the tab functionally I want/need for Fx 3.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox kind of has that. You can force every link to open in the current tab/window on regular left click. Use middle click for opening a link in a new tab/window. About:config:

browser.link.open_newwindow 1
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction 0

I use that because I like predictability. No need to wonder whether a link will pop up a new window or not.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Belial6]

I'm not saying that keeping everything in a single window isn't a better choice, but you do realize that every site you visit controls what your browser does don't you?

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[drinkypoo]

you do realize that every site you visit controls what your browser does don't you?

No, it really doesn't, because I use noscript. As such, only I control what my browser does. All the site developers can choose to do without my consent is display HTML. The popup thus won't even pop up, and all I will see is that your site sucks because it does not display valid content if I block javascript and other bullshit.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Belial6]

Then I guess that you don't understand that the site decides whether to put a picture on your screen, or just text. Displaying HTML IS controlling your browser. Now, if you decide that the shade of gray that you will tolerate ends with opening a new window, that is dandy. We all have our line that we won't cross, but a blanket statement that the site developer should not control your browser is ignoring the whole point of loading the browser in the first place.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if only javascript had some way to make functions execute on the unloading of a page!

Thankfully there's a way to disable it, since it's mainly used for evil.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Tangent128]

Using Opera, I just tear off the tab into a new window. MDI's been around for a while.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[isomeme]

The back button works fine, and without data loss potential, if you follow a simple recipe:

* Never return a page from a POST; redirect to a GET instead (after processing the POST).
* Never modify business data from a GET.
* Never allow pages containing dynamic data to be cached.

Follow those rules, and every page in your app will be safely bookmarkable and play nicely with the back button.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mrchaotica]

Hey, that's a bit harsh, don't you think?

No.

I develop for the web.

I use the web. And if you break my "back" button, I will hate you forever (and more importantly, I will use your competitor's service instead of yours).

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think graceful handling of the Back button is one of the main things that distinguishes "decently made web apps" from most of the crap that's out there on the web these days.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[TLLOTS]

Web Developers should have some control over your browser, but only some.

Oh and arguing in absolutes is the height of stupidity.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 3 has this already.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[sulfur]

You might also like Link Alert Firefox extension. It basically changes your mouse cursor to indicate the target of a link - particularly useful for "new window" links, https sites, PDFs, and javascript window.open()-style links.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[drinkypoo]

a blanket statement that the site developer should not control your browser is ignoring the whole point of loading the browser in the first place.

I'm pretty sure you missed the point of the world wide web.

The web is intended to provide a function for information which links to other information. Because of its simple design and adherence to standards it's easy for that information to be static, or dynamic, or someplace in between. This doesn't rule it out as an application delivery platform or anything; in fact, it makes it uniquely ideal for delivering certain types of application.

The web browser's purpose is given in its name; it is a web browser. It is intended to provide you a way to browse this information. Over time it has developed that it makes sense to deliver certain types of application via the browser because it is intended to be delivered to any user who comes along. Libraries and their indices, booking interfaces, purchasing systems, small games and so on all make sense on the web and more importantly do not require railroading my browser. They can all either work nicely within the existing paradigm of the web ("pages") or they can operate in a container within a page and thus behave themselves in that way.

Some developers insist on doing things which step outside this paradigm for no good reason, thus annoying and even often confusing users. Sometimes this is done deliberately, such as in the case of advertising pop-ups which seek to trick you into clicking on something as if it were part of your operating system.

The point I'm really trying to make, as should be illustrated by the prior paragraph, is that I should retain control of how my browser is used. When the application developer tries to make it behave in inconsistent ways when there is no need, they are breaking my chosen paradigm. This can only cause problems!

In some cases it may make sense to deliver a full-blown application via the web. In almost every case, however, this is a case in which the application's behavior is inherently compatible with the web's organization in "pages". And to mistreat users in this way is ignoring the whole point of delivering your application via a browser in the first place. Otherwise, let the user download it via their browser, and provide them with a native executable, or a java program, or whatever makes the most sense for your chosen audience. The biggest mistake web developers tend to make is to try to shoehorn some big unwieldy interface into a single web page, which makes no sense whatsoever since the web is inherently based on the concept of multiple pages and we have a ton of ways to exploit that fact.

Incidentally, I decide whether the site puts a picture on my screen, too. I installed ImgLikeOpera (I'm using a modem.) I'm not missing the point, I'm just saying.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[k8to]

"Gives your browser information to display."

"Controls what your browser does."

These are not equivalent.

When I talk to my mother she says things to me that I hear and understand and go into my brain. Short of punching her in the face or putting my ears over my hands and screaming as loud as I can, I cannot really stop the fact that I will process the datastream.

However, she does not control what I do.

Perhaps you can see the difference?

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[adah]

I have avoided this addon since the mid Fx 2.x days as it has become rather bloaty for my liking.

Firefox lacks many features in TabMixPlus, which allows restoring the session at a later time than start-up; allows undoing the close window operation; keeps a list of closed tabs/windows; saves/restores sessions (which can contain multiple windows and remembers the postion/history of tabs); etc. It is just superb, and Firefox really should integrate all these functionalities.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I guess that you don't understand that the site decides whether to put a picture on your screen, or just text. Displaying HTML IS controlling your browser.

And there you are wrong. Your web app decides what HTTP response to send, including HTML, CSS, Javascript etc. What to display is all decided by the client. You are not in control of that. A simple example: in Firefox, go to View->Page Style->No Style. Whoops there goes your CSS. NoScript, blocked images, same thing. Filtering proxies (for example, Privoxy) can do just about anything to the page. Hell, they could modify your AJAX calls if they wanted to. Or inject their own...

So no, you control nothing about my browser whatsoever. You only control what is sent to my browser prior to any filtering. Not what is displayed.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[TheRaven64]

Get a real web app toolkit. Seaside has supported users pressing the back button and not breaking things since before I first used it, which was about five years ago. If you're still using a web app kit where pressing back kills your state, then you are probably wasting your time.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[TheRaven64]

No, it was a fair criticism. If you want to develop for a platform, then you have two choices:

1. Understand the technical details of the platform.
2. Find a toolkit which abstracts them away so you don't have to understand them.

If you are using a toolkit that exposes these details and you don't understand them, then you are going to have problems. If you use something like Seaside to develop web apps then supporting the back button is completely trivial. If you use something which forces you to deal with URLs directly, then you need to do your own reverse state transforms.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[m50d]

It's not a case of "every trick of the trade", it's a case of basic functionality. Yes, you can manage without it, but you really shouldn't. Just like if you're not up to driving in the snow, then yes, I will not call you a "car driver", even if you can get away without that ability for most of your everyday driving. Because it's something every competent car driver should be capable of doing.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[TedRiot]

Which reminds me, I want to be able to undo when I accidentally close the wrong tab.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[mdm-adph]

Just a small point -- you really don't consider someone a "car driver" if they can't drive in snow? This when the vast majority of humanity never drives in snow, but seems to get along just fine? :\

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Off topic, but did you know that you can middle click a link to have it open in a new tab?

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[CrazedSanity]

AMEN! Gmail is very much AJAX-driven and is built with the back button in mind. Run a search, click the back button, go forward again... it all just works. Don't blame the user for something you should have compensated for.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Nicolay77]

Just use Opera, fixes both things:

-Opera remembers form data in history

-Has undo for closed tabs

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[repvik]

Firefox also remembers form data in history, and undo for closed tabs. That's not the point ;-)

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Clicking a link means "open this here". It does not mean "please fuck around with my window arrangement however you would like". I use a TABBED browser for a reason.

If this is the sort of criterion you use to judge whether an app is decently-made, I fear for the future of the Web.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[pjt33]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[nahdude812]

Wish I still had the mod points I had yesterday, I'd undo your flamebait moderation as it's unfair.

Try <script>window.history.forward();</script>

There is a difference between a web application and a web site. Normal applications rarely have a back button (except when going through a wizard), it does not always make sense for a web application to have a back button.

One of your responders points out that state is managed on the server and not the client. I'll point out that state is a combination of what's on the client and what's on the server.

We get many customer complaints for our web apps that are the consequence of a customer hitting back. Not because our app barfs when you hit back, but because the behavior is relatively undefined and becomes confusing for the customer (each customer expects it to behave in the way most beneficial to their intention, and this is not consistent between customers).

Let me give an example. Some of our customers are buyer accounts; usually a corporate office with many branch offices. They can buy for many ship-to customers. Each ship-to customer has its own set of possible contracts, product availability, shipping timeline, etc. Basically depending on what ship-to you're selected on, the rules are different.

Because the rules are different for each ship-to, when you change your ship-to, your cart is emptied (some of those items might not be available to your new ship-to, especially if that new ship-to doesn't have the legal license required to buy some of these products). Rather than remove only the unavailable items, cap the items that have new purchasing limits, etc, our research has found it's simply less confusing for the customer to empty their cart for them and make them start the ordering process again. The customer is warned that they'll lose their current cart contents before changing their ship-to.

Well some customers unfortunately need to place an identical order for a dozen or more separate ship-to's. The most intuitive way to do this of course is: 1) Select first ship-to, 2) place order, 3) change ship-to, 4) click back to the pre-submit confirmation screen, 5) re-submit the previous order on the new customer.

Well, so what do we do? Do we place the order if possible (the new ship-to meets all eligibility requirements), or do we rely on the fact that having changed the ship-to has emptied the cart, so all the quantities coming into that order are meaningless? To us we have to rely on the fact that the cart got emptied invalidates the information on the final step; the new ship-to might not be allowed to order all these products, might have a different contract, might have multiple contracts (and has not chosen which contract they want to apply), etc.

When you have things which have to be done in a certain order because each step of a process depends on the answers to the previous step, then it does not make sense to go 1a->2a->3a->4a->1b->3a->4b (where the b's are the second actual loading of those pages). It is safe to say this behavior is undefined. We define it to be the very safe, "start over" clause.

This is not even a complex scenario, we have apps (especially internal) that are substantially more complex than this. We give you a "Back to previous step" button, this maintains logical flow correctly; when you start jumping around in the steps and we have no control over that, it's substantially harder to define the outcome of every possible permutation of what order the customer feels like going through the steps.

This is a nice aspect of Ajax apps actually; we can take you through a multi-step process without you being able to use your browser's Back button to jump around in the steps except that you leave the process entirely and start it over again.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[nahdude812]

Session state is maintained on the server, not the client.

Overall state is a combination of the session on the server and the values on the client (such as in forms).

You're right, the web is not the most ideal from a user interface perspective for delivering applications. However it's substantially the simplest delivery mechanism both from the user's perspective and from the developer's perspective.

It's certainly possible to account for every possible combination of back-and-forward button clicks, but this is very expensive in terms of developer time when you're considering complex web applications. Sometimes it legitimately doesn't make sense to hit Back. I wouldn't say that disabling back all together makes sense, but I do think that it makes sense to say, "If the user pushes Back, take them to this page in their history."

For example a custom HTTP header named "Page-ID: OrderStep1" (settable of course also in tags), with a "Back-Goes-To: OrderStep1" header on steps 2, 3, and 4. If you have a "Back-Goes-To" with an ID the user has not been to yet, then it works like a normal back button. Alternatively, "Disable-BackButton-To-This-Page: Yes"

This way you can't lock a user into your site and you cannot really inconvenience them so much as require that they follow a set of steps in a given order.

Re:"Override Back Button Event"???

[m50d]

Just a small point -- you really don't consider someone a "car driver" if they can't drive in snow? This when the vast majority of humanity never drives in snow, but seems to get along just fine? :\

Yes, though this will have been influenced by where I live (England, in which it's a rare winter that doesn't have one or two snowy days). But I think anyone calling themselves a competent driver should be capable of it (even if they don't do so regularly; a large part of driving is the ability to adapt to conditions).

222 random people on the Internet

[TorKlingberg]

It seems the vote was open to anyone on the internet, and only 222 people answered. There will probably be more people writing comments in this thread.

Re:222 random people on the Internet

[jsebrech]

As one of the people who voted on it, I can tell you that I considered the vote well-advertised inside of the ajax development community. Many of the voters are the people building the javascript libraries that are powering "web 2.0" (hate that term, but it applies here).

Re:222 random people on the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems the vote was open to anyone on the internet, and only 222 people answered. There will probably be more people writing comments in this thread.

Here. Don't let it be said I didn't do my part

You know, in case it comes up, am I the only one..

[mdm-adph]

...who doesn't want cross-domain access? I'm perfectly fine with making server side code to parse whatever I need and then feed it to the browser via the local domain.

Am I missing something? Something about making a browser more independent of the server or something?

It's called SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

I've messed around with it a bit, some really neat stuff can be made with SVG. My two examples: http://layerv.com/jsdraw/index.xhtml http://layerv.com/games/hack/index.xhtml

Heh

[Shade of Pyrrhus]

Heh...you said "IE" and "standards" in the same sentence...

Sliding Panes

[Doc Ruby]

I'd love Firefox to let me set not just exclusive tabs each with their own page, but also to let me slide around a dividing border between two panels, each with its own page in it. Side by side, or top/bottom, or a grid of X x Y. Let me look at two (or more) pages at once, scrolling each independently inside its pane. Comparing. copy/pasting. Like Excel and OO.o spreadsheets can allocate ranges of cells to separate window "portals" onto the sheet below.

Re:Sliding Panes

[smussman]

And along with that, I'd like it to scroll when I put the mouse over it and scroll my mouse button. It drives me nuts when I try to scroll a background window in Windows, and the foreground window scrolls.

Re:Sliding Panes

[Otter Popinski]

Almost every platform that supports Firefox will allow you to open more than one instance of it and tile the windows. Should this really be handled by the application?

Re:Sliding Panes

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera.

Re:Sliding Panes

[ZERO1ZERO]

OK, not exactly like the 'ssplit' option in excel, but have you tried Opera? It has a proper MDI interface and can do multiple webpages within the main app window.

Re:Sliding Panes

[Doc Ruby]

I haven't used Opera lately. Early this year I tried to install Opera on my SonyEricsson phone, but it failed, and not smoothly. I'm not ready to switch browsers for just the "slideable multipane" feature. But I'd like to see someone incorporate that mature feature, as tested on Opera, into Firefox.

Re:Sliding Panes

[Doc Ruby]

What's the easy way for me to tile multiple open Firefox windows on Ubuntu?

But that's not quite enough. I don't want to have a whole GUI frame, including redundant navigation controls, for each page's pane (just one, that controls the active pane, like with tabs). And I don't want to have to rebuild the tiling, and de/retile my desktop's current mode when I switch among Firefox and other apps (like Evolution, OO.o, etc). Plus I would like the DOM to allow Javascript to access across independent pane boundaries, for app integration, and do other IPC.

So yes, the multipane feature and its subfeatures do belong to the Firefox app, and not the OS. Unless the OS can do all those things for Firefox (the DOM part seems impossible that way, though). But if the OS could do all that, and let me mix/match different app panes in a combined window, that would really transform my Desktop usage. If I could save combo "racks" of apps set up that way, with GUI features hidden or combined into a single "combo GUI" for the entire rack, then I'd probably stop a lot of my whining for a better Desktop.

Re:Sliding Panes

[Anonymous Coward]

splitbrowser extension ftw

Re:Sliding Panes

[joelpt]

I think you should be able to accomplish this in 5 minutes by creating a local HTML page incorporating FRAMESET/FRAME tags, along with a separate 'subpage' to be loaded into each frame containing a pseudo address bar (i.e. an INPUT TYPE=TEXT element, a Go button and a line of javascript).

Re:Sliding Panes

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:Sliding Panes

[Kugrian]

Like Split Browser?

Re:Sliding Panes

[Doc Ruby]

For each time I start a new frameset, I have to spend 5 minutes creating a new local HTML page? For each time that I delete or add a new page in the frameset, I have to spend time opening and editing the local HTML frameset page?

What I'm talking about does use that basic technology and technique. But gives an immediate GUI that lets me create that local HTML page and edit it by pointing at links and clicking buttons, not opening and editing files without automation.

A good way to do it would be to let me merge tabs together into two frames showing at the same time in the same window. Let me drag frames around inside the window to snap to bordering sides of other frames, then dropping them to push the shared border over. Letting me click and drag any frame's border across (or up/down) to reveal a new blank frame into which I can start browsing a new independent page. Maybe start with just a "View as Tabs/Panes" button or menu item that un/merges stacked tab frames into side by side draggable frames.

Since, as you point out, this technique could be done without modifying Firefox's current code in a crude (and unmanageable) fashion, making the GUI support doing it easily shouldn't be a very hard project.

Re:Sliding Panes

[Doc Ruby]

That Split Browser addon is exactly what I wanted! It works nearly perfectly, with only a few minor (workaroundable) bugs that target only one frame with some of the main browser functions, like "browser default homepage" and "Find". But it's really fullfeatured, and is just a presentation layer rendition alternate to tabs, interoperating with tabs and their GUI, that even mixes split frames and tabs together. Fantastic!

Your response just paid for hundreds of useless Slashdot flamewars :). Thanks.

Now, since you're so smart, can you tell me where to find an addon that turns the Firefox URL bar into a local commandline that outputs to the tabs/frames?

And if you can pull that off, how about an addon that sends those commandlines to a Perl interpreter, not just bash?

Re:Sliding Panes

[Doc Ruby]

Evidently, exactly like Split Browser. But someone beat you to it. Thanks for the great suggestion anyway.

And if you know of other FF addons that give a commandline shell in the URL bar, and a Perl interpreter for that commandline, I'd love to see them, too.

Re:Sliding Panes

[timelessroguestar]

One hack of a solution for Windows XP/2000 is to use a mouse tray application like Labtec Mouse V2.1. Make sure the wheel mode is set to enhanced scroll mode and you get very good scrolling based on where the mouse is floating.

It won't work without administrator privileges unfortunately, so i have a shortcut in my start up folder and set the shortcut to run with alternate credentials. You might also get some weird interactions with other mouse software, which may take some work to resolve.

I only wish knew a way to get the same effect without using an application, or at least not a tray application to do it. In the mean time, this hack is a god send for me at least.

Re:Sliding Panes

[drinkypoo]

you should install the all-in-one-sidebar.

Re:Sliding Panes

[smussman]

Cool. I'll have to try this when I get home, as I don't have admin rights on my computer here at work. Thanks for the tip!

Re:Sliding Panes

[steelfood]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4287
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/3275

Not perfect, but better than nothing. I only wish I could name them and redirect links between them.

Re:Sliding Panes

[Doc Ruby]

Too late, I already took the advice in this thread to install the Split Browser extension :).

Re:Sliding Panes

[Doc Ruby]

Yep, Split Browser looks like the deluxe version (with a few bugs), but Split Pannel [sic] looks good, too.

I wonder how I can use javascript: in the URL bar to script the DOM of separate panels in Split Browser, maybe sending data between separate pages that way. I guess it probably works just like the DOM of tabs in the same browser, which seems to be Split Browser's paradigm.

Re:Sliding Panes

[chrisl456]

Konqueror has had this ability since, well, forever. I guess it was "free" since it's also a file manager, and having split panels is quite common there.

Re:Sliding Panes

[pbhj]

You need konqueror then I think. Yes it runs on windows now under KDE4, but I think they crippled it because it was too good.

See http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT4753761802.html for an example image of split browsing.

Re:Sliding Panes

[zoips]

Get TweakUI and enable X-Mouse. Set delay to 0 ms and window focus will follow the mouse cursor.

Re:Sliding Panes

[cos(0)]

You just described a windowing system, which every modern graphical user interface implements. Why not make use of your window manager, rather than asking individual programs to reinvent the wheel?

Re:Sliding Panes

[Nicolay77]

There's some Javascript that does that in Opera.

Re:Sliding Panes

[Doc Ruby]

-1 Redundant.

This behavior has IPC and other features specific to encapsulation in the app, not in the OS.

But if you've got an OS widget that does it all, that would be interesting to try. In the meantime, I'm using the Firefox Split Browser addon, which demonstrates just why the app, not the OS, should be responsible. Though I'd love it even more if the OS included a window class with that kind of behavior. Or an OS that let me upgrade the default window class with a subclass that included Split "Browser" window functionality, so that all my apps could inherit that feature from that same upgrade. Until the OS does work like that, we need the apps to do it for themselves.

Because too many end users still use IE

[tepples]

I tought SVG is already implemented in most modern browsers...

Not when you weigh each browser by its usage share on home and business workstations. As long as Windows Internet Explorer doesn't implement SVG, and as long as Windows Internet Explorer has more than 50 percent usage share, "most modern browsers" don't implement SVG.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[mdm-adph]

You mistake IE for a modern browser. Be mindful of the fact that the only reason why you're still not using a seven year old release of IE6 is because Firefox lit a fire under their ass.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[Haeleth]

Semantics is a fun game, but being realistic, if you don't consider the market leader to be a "modern browser" then the concept is pretty useless, because pretty much anyone writing a modern web site is likely to want to cater for IE users -- however much you might wish they'd upgrade to a better product like Firefox, Opera, or Safari.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[dave420]

That is complete guesswork on your behalf, obviously. Unless you are in on the IE development meetings, of course, which I seriously doubt.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[mdm-adph]

Hey, I'll agree it's a bit of semantic fun to make fun of IE, but it's up to us to try and influence users to start using decent web tools (no, IE is not decent). It's not like web application designers are advocating the use of something superfluous (like Gnome over KDE or something) -- IE is a very, very poorly made browser (though, it's getting better, slowly).

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[Billhead]

Internet Explorer is one modern browser.
Firefox, Safari, and Opera together are three modern browsers.
I honestly don't know about the Safari and Opera's SVG implementations, but assuming they support SVG, 1 3.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[Billhead]

That is supposed to read "1 < 3"

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[Enderandrew]

Hey, they have IE8 coming up which borrows features from Flock in the way that IE7 borrowed all their features from Firefox. IE8's compliance mode often renders "compliant" code worse than IE7, and it is boat loads slower. Oh, and still no SVG/Canvas support. But IE8 will be the newest, most-modern browser on the market!

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[Sloppy]

but being realistic, if you don't consider the market leader to be a "modern browser" then the concept is pretty useless, because pretty much anyone writing a modern web site is likely to want to cater for IE users

I'd say that making "modern" become a synonym of "widely deployed" is what makes the concept useless. If you want to write a modern website, it's ok to exclude MSIE. If you want to make a popular website, then perhaps it doesn't. But why can't we say "modern" when we mean modern and say "widely deployed" when we mean widely deployed?

Trashing the language and changing the meaning of words can sometimes be ok, but in this instance, it doesn't get you anything because words that mean what you want to say, are already available. But it also comes with a cost (now we need a new word that means what "modern" used to). It's a cost with no gain: a net loss no matter how you look at it. So why do it?

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[Malevolyn]

Maybe I'm just some sort of martyr, but most of my sites tend to prevent IE users from having a rich experience. Try using the application/xhtml+xml mimetype for XHTML pages and see how many complaints you get from IE users saying your site asks them to download something when they visit. What good are standards when they're not enforced? If enough IE users start to have problems like the one above, they will either switch to a better browser or Microsoft will fall under increased pressure to comply to web standards.

Just kidding. It's fun to dream.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[Malevolyn]

I wouldn't say he's completely incorrect, though. IE7 and 8 beta came out pretty rapid fire compared to IE6 and 7.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[Anonymous Coward]

IE7 isn't a modern browser. Going by its feature set it's about 5 years old. Additionally, IE only accounts for 5-20% if your site is rather tech centered. I for one get only about 1% IE users... and most of those are bots with a faked user agent.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[jason.sweet]

they will either switch to a better browser or Microsoft will fall under increased pressure to comply to web standards

or they will go to another web site. Your attitude will serve you well if your sites cater to people who are likely to use something other than MSIE. Most users, however, will think your site is broken before they think their browser is broken.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[Anonymous Coward]

you stupid nerd. You've lost. give it up.

Re:Because too many end users still use IE

[CrazedSanity]

Internet Explorer, regardless of market share, is still one browser. If there are (for example) three top browsers including IE, and the other two support SVG, then most modern browsers would support SVG. Your comparison is like saying the number of a person with multiple children is the sum of the number of children... if this were true of voices, then I'd always be the swing vote.

SVG animation

[gr8_phk]

I'm glad Firefox has SVG and is improving it. I really want to see SVG animation. It sucks to use java script just to cause a diagram to have a few moving parts when animate transform would do the trick.

Re:SVG animation

[Anonymous Coward]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216462 shows there is a patch waiting to be reviewed and checked in, but today was the code freeze for Firefox 3.1 alpha 1 so looks like it missed the boat there. Perhaps in a later alpha/beta? Otherwise we'll have to wait till at least 2010 for Firefox 4.

Re:SVG animation

[gr8_phk]

That patch has been available for a while (and has improved) and was there prior to Firefox 3.0. It was "too late" for 3.0 so was to be postponed until 3.1. And now history repeats...

Re:SVG animation

[Unending]

Oh that's annoying, I love SVG and was hoping Firefox would put some effort into improving their support.

There is a comment by an AC in this thread that links to a paint program made in SVG, also some sort of hex tile engine made in SVG.

Also there is this http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/27/150233

Re:SVG animation

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that people at mozilla/firefox have been paid or threatened into leaving svg out of the main. Not kidding, I genuinely believe that.

Rich Text Editing?

[apathy maybe]

Don't we already have that? Yes, yes we do, it's called TinyMCE and it is licensed under the LGPL and can be included on your form with just a couple of lines in your HTML code.
Oh wait, you want native rich text editing? Yeah, like you are really going to get a consistent experience across different browsers...

You know what I want from my web browser? I want it not to freeze when loading large (and/or lots of) images, and I want secure JavaScript, including killing off all JavaScript easily (none of this take over the browser with 50.000 alerts crap). Yeah, I know Opera has that last one, but I want a [i]free[/i] browser as well.

Anything else? Security sounds nice. I personally don't have much of a use for vector graphics as a developer, but I can see how they would be useful for everyone else.

Ummm... Maybe I'm just not very imaginative, but I tend to find that stability and security top my list of what I want nearly every time.

(Though I have to admit, the new address bar in Firefox 3 is nicer then the Firefox 2 bar.)

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[apathy maybe]

Oh, did I mention I run NoScript? And I apologise for the BB code, I haven't done any HTML stuff today, but I have posted on RevLeft.

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera has been free for 8 years. And it seems to do pretty much everything you want.

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[drinkypoo]

Just install the xinha here extension. It lets you html edit any textarea.

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera has been free for a couple of years, you insensitive clod.

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[jsebrech]

Don't we already have that? Yes, yes we do, it's called TinyMCE [moxiecode.com] and it is licensed under the LGPL and can be included on your form with just a couple of lines in your HTML code.

With rich text editing they mean a foundation sufficient to build a light-weight word clone in. The current browser support for rich text is so poor that it's not possible to use it without some whizkid's library, and even with the library it's really poor, barely up to the level of wordpad in capability.

Ummm... Maybe I'm just not very imaginative, but I tend to find that stability and security top my list of what I want nearly every time.

No, functionality is at the top of your list, you just don't realize it. Remember when people raved about gmail? Gmail would have never happened had the browsers focused exclusively on stability and security.

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[woot account]

I believe he was saying he wanted free as in speech, which Opera is not.

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Though I have to admit, the new address bar in Firefox 3 is nicer then the Firefox 2 bar.)

Evil! Tried clearing Private Data Lately? Once you do, check out your newfangled bar and tell me how much you like it.
http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-searchindex.php?locale=en-US&words=richresults&sa=

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[TheRaven64]

Part of the problem is, what do you actually want from a rich text editor? For a site I'm involved with, what we really want is something that allows the user to add semantic markup (headings, footnotes, keywords, etc) in much the same way that Markdown does, but with a live rich-text preview. The one thing TinyMCE does that's really nice is allow users to paste a document from Word and have inline images uploaded (although managing the result is a colossal pain).

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[apathy maybe]

Yeah, I don't see Gmail as being that wonderful actually. I still prefer old "new" Yahoo mail. (That is, the version they introduced after the frames version.)

Re:Rich Text Editing?

[Anonymous Coward]

TinyMCE is a pretty poor implementation. We tried it and had all sorts of performance issues owing mostly to the fact that the "Tiny" in the name is the opposite of what the product actually is. Even if you want a platform-independent solution, there are much better options than TinyMCE.

But the best RTEs out there use the support that the browsers specifically give for RTEs. In Firefox, it's called Midas and I know IE has its own implementation too, but I'm forgetting what it is off the top of my head. What they're asking for is a standard that all browsers can implement so that we don't have to write X different versions on top of X distinct implementations where X is the number of browsers that you choose to support. That's pretty reasonable and I hope Firefox listens to this input and lobbies the W3C to standardize the Midas API since it's a lot nicer to deal with than the IE API. Not that Microsoft would ever implement it, but if Safari and Opera do, then the number drops from X to 2 which is pretty doable.

It's called preinstalled IE

[tepples]

I've messed around with it a bit, some really neat stuff can be made with SVG.

Right. But other than Apple, which major home and business PC maker installs a web browser that implements SVG on new PCs that it builds? As far as I can tell, most PC makers install IE 7 as the suggested (or only!) web browser without an SVG plug-in.

Re:It's called preinstalled IE

[IBBoard]

Dell? At least they probably do on their Ubuntu pre-installs (Firefox).

Re:It's called preinstalled IE

[Culture20]

Do Asus' eee's use FF?

Personal Info Insertion

[Doc Ruby]

I'd like HTML forms to include a tag that uniquely identifies the site publishing the form, and the form itself. Probably a hash of the form's field names, signed by the site with its SSL certificate. Then I could click an option on the form to repopulate it with the last data I already inserted into that same form the last time I filled it (or any previous time, in a history). Storing that data on my local terminal, rather than leave it stored at the remote site.

And I'd like for the full range of common personal info fields to have standard names, so I could click to fill out the neverending series of personal info forms the Web challenges me with all day, every day. Click to refill the form with the same info as last time I visited it. Or one dataset from a list of named profiles stored on my local machine. So I don't have to remember what personal info I disclosed to this or that site, or scrounge for it from the other places I keep that info stored personally.

If the system let my browser point at a "personal info server", I could click to populate these personal info forms using anyone's terminal, not just my own, though I'd have to trust the terminal not to exploit the personal data exposed while using its browser as a transfer point. Maybe these personal info forms could also take a URL that points directly at my personal info server, and let the challenging server direct its request to my personal info server, which lets the challenging server login (as prearranged) and get the data specified as available to it.

That infrastructure would take some work. But it would save me a lot of trouble every day. And therefore save a lot of trouble for millions of others in the same boat. While lowering the transaction barriers, without sacrificing security. And indeed increasing security, by minimizing the personal data stored outside my control, at numerous (and forgettable) unaccountable remote servers.

Re:Personal Info Insertion

[Anonymous Coward]

Work is happening on this. Google infocard, cardspace, identity metasystem, etc.

Re:Personal Info Insertion

[m50d]

And I'd like for the full range of common personal info fields to have standard names, so I could click to fill out the neverending series of personal info forms the Web challenges me with all day, every day.

That is a *very* good idea. I've noticed some of this happening already - my Konqueror has autocompleted my addresses on websites I've never used before, because they use the same field names as sites which I have - but some standard field names would make it really easy.

Yeah, right.

[gamanimatron]

TinyMCE - half a billion fragment loads later, it might work. Or maybe it won't; my one and only experience with it was trying to hunt down a bug with image link embedding in some wiki I was evaluating. I'd really rather have something standards-based in native code. Something that still works when I decide to kill off all the JavaScript on the page.

Speaking of which, the NoScript extension for Firefox is absolutely fantastic at limiting the amount of crap scripting running in your browser.

I'd just like /. to work

[oodaloop]

You'd think on a geek website the CSS would work, links wouldn't take you to random parts of the page, text wouldn't constantly overlap, etc. If maybe we could get that simple stuff to work first before we take on all this over stuff.

It's a good thing IE doesn't do graphics...

[lordofwhee]

Remember what happens when IE DOES do graphics?

*points to the VML exploit*

I say let M$ keep their incompetent hands off anything they can't properly secure (which (flamebait :D) seems to be everything).

back buttons

[chrisboredwithlogins]

The reason people stupidly attempt to knobble the back button is they seem to think its quite okay to do things like ?id=23 in a url or have a hidden field in a form for an id

This makes for a *very* insecure site, the easy way round is to encrypt the data items together and use a one time page impression hash.

When the back button or history is used, silently fail the one time hash and act as if the appropriate action was selected.

A little care needs to be take with multi part forms to make sure you start at the beginning of whatever process.

Doing this with php is basically trivial, but it does take a little extra thought....

The *slight* extra time needed for a query and some encryption is more than made up for by the increased robustness.

and 222 votes?

[cliffski]

not to mention that 222 votes is statistically irrelevant. Only a fool would base any business decision on such a woefully small sample size.

Re:and 222 votes?

[snoyberg]

I think you need to go back to stats and look up statistically insignificant. Namely, 222 *can* be a large enough sample size, depending on the variance of the results.

Re:and 222 votes?

[Anonymous Coward]

The word was "irrelevant" and you don't need to do any math to know that the opinions of 143 people who clearly fall outside the mainstream about what's important for the web is indeed irrelevant.

Re:and 222 votes?

[Gilmoure]

Like the Senate!

Re:and 222 votes?

[snoyberg]

Yes, I saw that his word was "insignificant," I elected to replace it with irrelevant in my post since that is what would be more important in this context. And while 143 people from group X may not be representative of group Y, those 143 people most certainly may be representative of group X itself.

Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

Maybe I'm drinking the Kool-Aid here, but I'm a little excited for Silverlight.

* Microsoft assisted with a Linux version, even though the Linux version is OSS, and the Mono guys own that code.
* Silverlight supports Firefox as well as IE.
* Silverlight supports 32-bit and 62-bit browsers.
* From what I've read (I'm a shitty web designer who only barely knows PHP and CSS) scripting in Silverlight is easier and more efficient than in Flash.

Adobe has zero intent of really supporting Linux, nor 64-bit. Silverlight is better than any alternative out there right now. So why all the hate?

If Apple released Silverlight, I imagine the community response would be vastly different for the same platform.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[AngryLlama]

I knew it! Silverlight supports 62bit browsers, and not 64bit browsers. There is the catch. I wonder if Microsoft has a patent on 62bit computing?

Seriously though, Silverlight does seem nice, and I actually do hope it is a Flash-killer. At least, some competition is always welcome. Especially if MS is actually playing nice. However, Silverlight is no excuse to lack proper SVG/Canvas support.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Gewalt]

Then we shall wait til next month, when apple does release one.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize adobe has released an official flash player for Linux right? How did such an ignorant post get modded insightful?

Microsoft is not to be trusted, they have proven this time and time again. Silverlight itself is built on a platform designed to screw everyone in the IT world over.

Microsoft tried to corrupt Java and make it Windows only... and got stopped. So they cloned Java, e.g. .NET, and made it Windows only.

Mono is a few major revisions behind Microsoft's implementation. It doesn't support a large part of Microsoft's software stack. It is basically "Managed Wine."

It's not the kind of thing I'd want to rely on and no one in their right mind should let Silverlight put Microsoft in a position to take over the Internet.

So in short: avoid Silverlight like the plague that it is.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[eulernet]

I'm a little excited for Silverlight.

Propaganda wins !

The problem with such technologies is that they require powerful computers, with plenty of RAM (and probably a fast video card), and a solid user base.
Flash became what it is now because it's cross-platform, and everybody has Flash on his computer, because Youtube uses Flash.

Do you think a major Internet player will push Microsoft's technology, even if it was the best possible in the whole world ?

Microsoft has never been able to be successful except when closing the market, so it's doubtful that they'll be able to win in an open competition.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm glad to see that 62-bit browsers are supported. Now if only they could get 64-bit support, i'd be really excited.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because Apple doesn't have quite such an onerous history of systematically corrupting open standards.

Do you really think that a promise from Microsoft of cross platform compatibility is anything other than a trial offer to get you hooked and then eventually locked in to Windows? They are very predictable in their methods.

Microsoft Internet Explorer - only runs on a Windows PC. At one point was supported on the Mac and UNIX, now Windows only.
Microsoft Office - works best on Windows. There's a Mac version, but it's not nearly as good. To say nothing of their ISO OOXML shenanigans.
Microsoft Outlook - works best with Exchange, works less well than other normal e-mail clients with IMAP on non-Exchange servers.
Microsoft Java support - Microsoft intentionally crippled their own custom Java implementation, then dropped it from their default install entirely, later creating C# instead.

Microsoft makes a vast amount of money on Windows, which is arguably not the best operating system (except for its compatibility with a bunch of existing third party programs). Open cross platform standards are a serious threat to their OS business, and they will do anything and everything before supporting them fully and without corrupting them.

For more information on how this strategy works, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[imboboage0]

* Silverlight supports 32-bit and 62-bit browsers.

Interesting. Might I inquire as to where you purchase your 62 bit processors? Mine has 64 bit capability and would probably freak out without the extra two. =]

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[croddy]

All that is nice, but what we need is a vector graphics kit that's not shipped by yet another fucking vendor. Something that's a spec, not a binary.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Mctittles]

"From what I've read (I'm a shitty web designer who only barely knows PHP and CSS) scripting in Silverlight is easier and more efficient than in Flash." God-Damn it's actually working! When I first found out about silverlight, I did a google search to find opinions on it, and the top few sites I found were blog entries and/or comments of people comparing it to flash and saying how much better/easier it was. But.....these looked very suspicious as they sounded like an ad since the writers talked it up TOO much and said no good things in comparison about flash. Anyway, the main problem with every article I have found praising silverlight so far, is they are comparing it against VERY EARLY flash versions. Most make claims at things silverlight can do that flash 4 cannot. I have yet to find one article to a comparison of Flash 9 VS silverlight, but since Flash 9 is older or at least the same year as silverlight, it's the only fair comparison....and programming in AS3 with support to save all animation in XML files is waaaay different than any other version of flash. Ok, sorry to rant, but it seems Microsoft is paying people to blog post, and comment on the internet to make it difficult for anyone to search and find a non-bias review of it. Can't say I know EVERYTHING about silverlight, but from what I have seen I'm not impressed...and it crashed IE multiple times for me. I say leave it to the experienced people who have been fine tuning flash for years....Microsoft has to 'try' and do everything better (Javascript, JAVA, Flash, etc) and usually make it worse with more bugs BUT still end up outselling the (sometimes free) competitors.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

Adobe repeatedly refused to release an updated Flash plugin for Linux. That is why they skipped a version. They said they were done with Linux support. One guy kept pestering Adobe offering to code it for free, and the eventually let him create an updated Flash plugin. Allowing one man to do the work unpaid begrudgingly is not what I'd call supporting a platform.

You suggest Silverlight is designed to screw everyone.

Absolute statements just don't hold up.

Not every Apple product is a massive success. Not every Apple product is great for graphics. Not every Apple product has a great UI.

Not every OSS product is really "open" (take a look at OpenOffice and Sun's strangehold).

Not every Microsoft product is terrible. Not every Microsoft project is evil.

And Mono is completely different from Wine.

You offer vague accusations with no proof.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

The comparisons I read were how you could do the same things AS3 allowed you to do, but in fewer lines of code. Again, I haven't dug into the code, and I admitted that I might be buying into a propaganda machine. My question, if no better alternative exists, why hate on it?

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

The other two bits are reserved for WGA hypervisors. If Windows doesn't validate successfully, your processor self destructs, and then sues you for damages.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[edward chan]

"Adobe repeatedly refused to release an updated Flash plugin for Linux. That is why they skipped a version. They said they were done with Linux support. One guy kept pestering Adobe offering to code it for free, and the eventually let him create an updated Flash plugin. Allowing one man to do the work unpaid begrudgingly is not what I'd call supporting a platform." What are you talking about? I happen to know several engineers on the Flash Player team at Adobe that currently work on the Linux version. And as far as I know, the upcoming version, FP10, fully supports Linux as well.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Mctittles]

Well, I would guess the main reason I hate on it, is because as a programmer I'm not looking forward to yet another type of technology learning required to do the same thing I could do with flash. It's just annoying that when new technologies come out and a company goes to a keynote speech or tech meeting and they come to me and NEED to have this on their web-page. If it was something innovative I would be all over it, but if it's just another company trying to do the same thing already done then to me it's just more hassle and wasted time. Our browsers are already flooded with crap and I don't see the need to add more weight to it....but maybe that's just me.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

AIR supports linux

The idea that Silverlight is more cross-platform is a strange one.

I'm not sure about 64-bit, but it seems like that's almost moot.

The most important thing is that companies are adopting AIR far more than they are Silverlight.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Mctittles]

By the way, do you happen to have a link to the article? I wouldn't mind taking some time to argue it out instead of speculating. I'm curious what exactly they found better or if it is just a general "it's better" thing...

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

I'm at work, and they actually are pretty hard core about internet usage here. I try to limit my web browsing at work to a few IT blogs that I can justify as work related. I'll browse for the articles later tonight at home.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Cyberax]

Moonlight (Novell version of Silverlight) supports only parts of Silverlight 1.0.

Silverlight 2.0 is MUCH MUCH MUCH bigger (basically, it's a cut-down version of CLR) and it'll take a loooong time to be implemented on Mono.

And by the time it's implemented MS will have Silverlight 3.0

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

* Silverlight supports 32-bit and 62-bit browsers.

Aha, you see! They're just planning ahead, I hear Windows 7 is going to be 62-bit.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[joeslugg]

* Silverlight supports 32-bit and 62-bit browsers. ...
So why all the hate?

Because it's 2 bits short. :-)

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[mweather]

Allowing one man to do the work unpaid begrudgingly is not what I'd call supporting a platform.

They release an officially supported Flash plugin for Linux. Who at Microsoft do I call for Moonlight support on Linux?

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[mweather]

Do you think a major Internet player will push Microsoft's technology, even if it was the best possible in the whole world ?

Nope. That's what automatic update is for.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[beemishboy]

History man, history.

Where is IE for the mac? It's gone.

Where is Microsoft's media player for the mac? Piece of outdated junk.

Outside of Office for the Mac and some other minor things, MS is 100% invested in the MS stack - it doesn't make business sense for them to develop for other platforms - it's a broken system when it comes to open standards.

If they spend enough money coming out with version 1.0 for other platforms... and if they spend enough money buying downloads of it so people will use it during the Olympics... then maybe it will take off. Then when it's a "standard," what's the incentive for investing in a linux or mac version at all? Heck look at IE after version 6.

I'm not saying that it doesn't have technical advantages over flash and that it isn't nice to have readable content for search engines, I'm just saying - look at where MS's money goes. It doesn't make any sense for them to be more open than they absolutely have to be - that's Microsoft's business.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[nabasu]

No Opera support?

(I use Opera and I have no plans of switching to another browser.)

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[gbjbaanb]

Nope. That's what automatic update is for.

Windows Update works for Firefox now? gosh, I never knew.... :)

FF is a major market share, so if MS wants silverlight to dominate, they have to get FF users to install it. They'll do that by making some sites use it - perhaps a Youtube clone that only uses Silverlight, or Yahoo front page or Yahoo chat.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[jsebrech]

* Microsoft has a proven track record on cross-platform support, and by that I mean that anyone who ever bet on a cross-platform microsoft technology have ended up regretting their decision.

* Actionscript 3 is not less efficient than silverlight scripting. The current edge of silverlight is that it supports more languages, but adobe is working on a cross-compiler that compiles existing C/C++ code to actionscript bytecode. For example, they've ported quake 2 to flash (http://blip.tv/file/408241, 5 minutes in).

* Adobe does want to support linux, it's just not high on their list of priorities because linux users (especially 64 bit) are not technology decision makers that influence a flash purchasing decision.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

* Silverlight supports 32-bit and 62-bit browsers.

That right there is another blatant example of Microsoft pushing their own standards on the rest of the world. Why 62 bits, when the rest of the world has been standardized on 64? And it's not like the extra 2 bits will cost them anything.

...I'm a little excited for Silverlight...I'm a shitty web designer...

And there's no need for all that redundancy. We got it the first time.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'll bite (again).

"Adobe repeatedly refused to release an updated Flash plugin for Linux. That is why they skipped a version. They said they were done with Linux support. One guy kept pestering Adobe offering to code it for free, and the eventually let him create an updated Flash plugin. Allowing one man to do the work unpaid begrudgingly is not what I'd call supporting a platform."

That sounds fucking crazy to me. Yes, Adobe skipped a version. However, they did so because that version was a transition to a pretty new codebase. I'm not arguing that proprietary Flash is great... it pretty much sucks. However, Adobe isn't in a position to use Flash to create greater lock in for "Adobe OS" or whatever. So Flash is the lesser of two evils in this case (and I mean actual evils, not just metaphorically).

"You suggest Silverlight is designed to screw everyone."

Silverlight is about screwing everyone but Microsoft. It's prime reason for existing is to promote Vista and Windows. That's it. If Flash only ran on Windows, Silverlight wouldn't exist.

"Not every Apple product is a massive success. Not every Apple product is great for graphics. Not every Apple product has a great UI."

Uhh, ok, not sure what this tangent is referring too.

"Not every OSS product is really "open" (take a look at OpenOffice and Sun's strangehold)."

You clearly don't understand what open source is do you? You realize IBM has forked OpenOffice from Sun's "strangehold." Have you ever heard of NeoOffice? Same deal. They took source from OpenOffice and made their own version.. for their platform or product.

"Not every Microsoft product is terrible. Not every Microsoft project is evil."

You're right, not every product and project is evil. But Silverlight definitely is, to anyone with a brain.

"And Mono is completely different from Wine."

Are your years of programming experience failing you now?

Wine is a reimplementation of the Win32 software stack. Microsoft's version only works on Windows. So, some enterprising developers used Microsoft's own specifications (when available) to create a clean room reimplementation of Win32 for various platforms.

Mono is a reimplementation of the .NET software stack (the successor to Win32). Microsoft's version only works on Windows. So, some enterprising developers used Microsoft's own specifications (when available) to create a clean room reimplementation of .NET for various platforms.

Now, considering Wine only runs about 10% of Win32 applications well and Mono only runs about 10% of .NET applications well, perhaps you understand why I see similarities in the two.

"You offer vague accusations with no proof."

I anxiously wait your poignant response, refuting me.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[pinkstuff]

And as far as I know, the upcoming version, FP10, fully supports Linux as well.

Will it support 64bit Linux?

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Red Flayer]

Silverlight supports 32-bit and 62-bit browsers.

Sweet, where can I get a 62-bit browser?

I already have a two-bit browser, that would be IE7.

/Ducks

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

AIR is just a cross-platform runtime based on Safari + Flash plugin though isn't it?

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you can lie and not come across as a tool?

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Repossessed]

The Register (specifically, the Open Season webcast) did an interview with some managerial type or another from Adobe, who stated that FP10 will have a same day release for Linux (Though I assume Linux's will come an hour later, just on principle.)

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[FirstTimeCaller]

Ok, time to throw some karma on the fire. Silverlight supports vector graphics. If you ask for the spec on the Silverlight vector graphics, MS will direct you to the XPS spec. In there you will find a very complete 2D graphic markup specification that will look a lot like SVG (in fact converting SVG to XPS is fairly trivial). This is a legitimate specification that is currently be made into an open standard (TC46). I know bashing Microsoft is a popular pastime on Slashdot (and most of the time they deserve it). But sometimes, MS does the right thing (e.g. DirectX and Silverlight) -- perhaps only be accident, but still.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

Microsoft has said in their PR releases that they would support Moonlight development, both for the plugin and developers trying to code content for it.

I'd ask Miguel and the Mono team who their contact is at Microsoft.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

"It's prime reason for existing is to promote Vista and Windows"

Which is exactly why they're helping to develop it for other browsers and operating systems.

You make zero sense.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

Mike Melanson blogged about it back in 2006 and 2007.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

Opera attempts to support nsplugins, so it might just work. Then again, Opera can't get Flash to work either these days. If Silverlight works in Opera, that would be a step up from Flash.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they said Silverlight only runs in IE on Windows, they know it wouldn't get any traction.

So they fake "supporting" other browsers and operating systems until the damage is done.

Have you not heard of Microsoft's novel "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" business strategy? This is Slashdot for fucks sake!

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[croddy]

More importantly, I want to know why he's not allowed to answer that question.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

Except the Moonlight version is open source. Not only is Microsoft pushing for a Linux version, they're pushing for an OSS Linux version, and the Mono team owns the copyright on the code as well.

Microsoft has done tons of evil things, but that doesn't by proxy make this move evil.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Enderandrew]

You think you can post as an AC and be taken seriously?

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

The response for Apple would be vastly different because they cant force people to use their crap. Microsoft can.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[m50d]

That sounds fucking crazy to me. Yes, Adobe skipped a version. However, they did so because that version was a transition to a pretty new codebase. I'm not arguing that proprietary Flash is great... it pretty much sucks. However, Adobe isn't in a position to use Flash to create greater lock in for "Adobe OS" or whatever. So Flash is the lesser of two evils in this case (and I mean actual evils, not just metaphorically).

Regardless of the intention, Flash is actually worse for windows lockin, at the moment - it won't work (yes, I've tried the various workarounds, they don't work) on 64-bit linux at all, where it does work on linux it uses 90% processor power just to play a tiny youtube video. Flash on linux is, whatever the intentions behind it, less practical than silverlight on linux.

Wine is a reimplementation of the Win32 software stack. Microsoft's version only works on Windows. So, some enterprising developers used Microsoft's own specifications (when available) to create a clean room reimplementation of Win32 for various platforms.
Mono is a reimplementation of the .NET software stack (the successor to Win32). Microsoft's version only works on Windows. So, some enterprising developers used Microsoft's own specifications (when available) to create a clean room reimplementation of .NET for various platforms.

The difference being that .NET is based on public, published standards - it's in the same category as PDF, which most of us, even the strongest of the free software zealots, seem more than happy to use on linux. (Yes, there is patent FUD flying around, but you can do that for any format. (Did you know PDFs often use LZW? If you use them in your linux system, you run the risk of getting sued by unisys!)). The only reasons for being dubious about it are its origin, and while MS's history is not something to be taken lightly, companies can and do change - you use IBM as an example of good use and promotion of open source in your post, where in the '80s people like you would be telling us not to touch anything that came out of IBM with a bargepole.

Now, considering Wine only runs about 10% of Win32 applications well and Mono only runs about 10% of .NET applications well, perhaps you understand why I see similarities in the two.

Bollocks, frankly. I'm surprised when a .NET application doesn't run under Mono, and indeed even for a win32 application under wine. The lock-in factor is actually a lot less severe than with Java, which would seem the main alternative - don't take my word for it, do what I did, take a random sample of java and .net programs from freshmeat, and try running the wine ones in MS.net and Mono, and the Java ones in Sun Java and a non-Sun Java of choice.

Both in theory and in practice, .net is an open standard, and vastly superior to flash in this respect.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of the intention, Flash is actually worse for windows lockin, at the moment - it won't work (yes, I've tried the various workarounds, they don't work) on 64-bit linux at all, where it does work on linux it uses 90% processor power just to play a tiny youtube video. Flash on linux is, whatever the intentions behind it, less practical than silverlight on linux.

While this has been true in the (distressingly recent) past, this is no longer true. Flash 9.0.124 leaves plenty of CPU power (about 50% on a 1.3 GHz Celeron M) free when playing YouTube videos on OpenSUSE 11, which is not noticeably worse than on XP (and full-screen mode actually works without turning into a slideshow!).

Similarly, nspluginwrapper allows Flash to run in a 64-bit Firefox and is set up by default in OpenSUSE. If Flash doesn't work on another distribution, that's the distribution's problem.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you get the crack that you smoke? It must be some crazy shit to make you so out of sync with reality.

Regardless of the intention, Flash is actually worse for windows lockin, at the moment - it won't work (yes, I've tried the various workarounds, they don't work) on 64-bit linux at all, where it does work on linux it uses 90% processor power just to play a tiny youtube video. Flash on linux is, whatever the intentions behind it, less practical than silverlight on linux.

How is a technology (Silverlight) that only runs on Windows better for other platforms than a technology that actually runs on other platforms (Flash)? They both suck, but at least Flash on Linux is 100% compatible with Flash on Windows. Moonlight is only compatible with a small subset of Silverlight applications, considering that Moonlight is only Silverlight 1.0 compatible... whereas Silverlight is now on version 2.0. If Microsoft "officially" supported Moonlight, why is it a major version behind? Why is mono a major version behind .NET?

The difference being that .NET is based on public, published standards - it's in the same category as PDF, which most of us, even the strongest of the free software zealots, seem more than happy to use on linux. (Yes, there is patent FUD flying around, but you can do that for any format. (Did you know PDFs often use LZW? If you use them in your linux system, you run the risk of getting sued by unisys!)). The only reasons for being dubious about it are its origin, and while MS's history is not something to be taken lightly, companies can and do change - you use IBM as an example of good use and promotion of open source in your post, where in the '80s people like you would be telling us not to touch anything that came out of IBM with a bargepole.

Not all of the .NET platform is fully published as a public specification. In fact large parts of the class library are private and proprietary. That's one of the reasons Mono will never be 100% compatible, even in the best of circumstances. Yes, IBM used to suck, but they have learned since then. Look at Eclipse and the other numerous open source technologies IBM contributes.

Bollocks, frankly. I'm surprised when a .NET application doesn't run under Mono, and indeed even for a win32 application under wine. The lock-in factor is actually a lot less severe than with Java, which would seem the main alternative - don't take my word for it, do what I did, take a random sample of java and .net programs from freshmeat, and try running the wine ones in MS.net and Mono, and the Java ones in Sun Java and a non-Sun Java of choice.

Both in theory and in practice, .net is an open standard, and vastly superior to flash in this respect.

"Bollocks" to you, frankly. If you're surprised when a .NET application doesn't run on Mono, then you must not know much about .NET or Mono. As great as Wine is, if you think it's some magic panacea for running Windows apps, you are again deluding yourself.

It's funny you mention "Java lock-in factor" when:

A) The official Sun Java implementation is open source and has been available in source form for acedemic use for years

B) There are hundreds (if not thousands) of implementations of Java from various people and companies.

As far as compatibility is concerned, it can be technically PROVEN for a given application. In the Java world, there is a technology called the "TCK." What the Java TCK's purpose is to check and report just how compatible a given Java implementation is with the official standard. If you want examples of 100% compatible Java environments, you can check out IBM's Java, Apple's Java, BEA's Java and they are many more 100% compatible implementations.

I say 100% because they can be systematically proven to be compatible. You can't do this with Mono and .NET because Microsoft has no reason to develop the technology to do so. Why? Because they only support .NET on Windows, anything else is an "unauthorized use of Microsoft technology," as they have publicly stated in the past.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[xouumalperxe]

Would you expect adobe to offer support on the gazillions of pdf implementations out there? As horrendously strange it sounds to me to actually say this, if they made the silverlight spec in a sensible way, such that the Mono people managed to implement it without any stupid hacks (I'm not stating that's the case, as I honestly don't know), then it's good enough. In fact, I'd say it's better than making an "officially supported plug-in" without giving us the specs. If moonlight is (and remains) a solid implementation of silverlight, I'll take that as prima fascia evidence that MS, for once, played nicely with others.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[m50d]

Similarly, nspluginwrapper allows Flash to run in a 64-bit Firefox and is set up by default in OpenSUSE. If Flash doesn't work on another distribution, that's the distribution's problem.

Like I say, I've tried nspluginwrapper. It's buggy as hell. Yes, it works when it works, but it also crashes about one time in three.

Re:Hopeful in regards to Silverlight?

[m50d]

How is a technology (Silverlight) that only runs on Windows better for other platforms than a technology that actually runs on other platforms (Flash)? They both suck, but at least Flash on Linux is 100% compatible with Flash on Windows. Moonlight is only compatible with a small subset of Silverlight applications,

Because my experience with Flash on linux/x86_64 has been that it is buggy as hell, wheras my experience with Moonlight has been generally positive - not perfect, no, but better. Empirical results, that's all.

considering that Moonlight is only Silverlight 1.0 compatible... whereas Silverlight is now on version 2.0. If Microsoft "officially" supported Moonlight, why is it a major version behind? Why is mono a major version behind .NET?

I never claimed that MS was officially supporting it, merely that the standard was published. If Mono isn't keeping up, that may well be just a sign of a lack of developers, it doesn't have to be anything sinister.

Not all of the .NET platform is fully published as a public specification. In fact large parts of the class library are private and proprietary.

Sure, they've got their own proprietary parts in the libraries they ship, but that's true of anything - look at the sun.* hierarchy in Java, or the myriad GNU extensions to C. They elected to use thin wrappers around the win32 API for e.g. GUI (and given the snails that AWT/Swing are, I can't blame them), so of course that's going to be windows-only, but it's all isolated off into the correct parts of the class library (mostly System.Windows.*). But if you prefer you can use your favourite cross-platform GUI library (both GTK and Qt bindings) and write a cross-platform app with it. .net in itself doesn't lock you into a single platform any more than C does.

Yes, IBM used to suck, but they have learned since then. Look at Eclipse and the other numerous open source technologies IBM contributes.

My point exactly - so don't be too quick to dismiss a promising technology just because it comes from MS.

"Bollocks" to you, frankly. If you're surprised when a .NET application doesn't run on Mono, then you must not know much about .NET or Mono. As great as Wine is, if you think it's some magic panacea for running Windows apps, you are again deluding yourself.

My surprise is not based on theory, but rather on empirical experience - when downloading a random utility program for .net or win32, my experience has been that 9 times out of 10 I can run it.

A) The official Sun Java implementation is open source and has been available in source form for acedemic use for years

Is it actually open source yet? I've been tuning out the hundreds of "Sun's going to open source Java really, and real soon now" announcements on slashdot. As for academic use, I'm pretty sure that's true of the official .net implementation too.

B) There are hundreds (if not thousands) of implementations of Java from various people and companies.

As far as compatibility is concerned, it can be technically PROVEN for a given application. In the Java world, there is a technology called the "TCK." What the Java TCK's purpose is to check and report just how compatible a given Java implementation is with the official standard. If you want examples of 100% compatible Java environments, you can check out IBM's Java, Apple's Java, BEA's Java and they are many more 100% compatible implementations.

I say 100% because they can be systematically proven to be compatible.

Yeah, and you can take your systematically proven, 100% compatible implementation, and try it in the real, empirical world, and all that pretty theory doesn't mean shit. I have put quite a lot of effort into this, because Sun Java on my system has a bug (yes, it is a bug in Java, it's well known (GUIs are broken when X has been compile

SVG animation in Inkscape.

[doti]

Funny, just now I was checking the Roadmap for Inkscape. SVG animation is planned for the next-next release (0.48, it's 0.46 now, 0.47 will be basically some internal re-factoring).

Unfortunately, multi-page support, which was the feature I was looking for, is planned for 0.49 (or 0.50?).

OpenAjax is still not widely known

[OpenDomain]

I have been trying to help create a universal, Open Ajax library for years, and so I have thought 'OpenAjax' would be the solution. the problem seems to be that is is driven by the corporate hosts and no the individual developers. Also - if you look on any job board, you will not find ANY job specifying 'OpenAjax' as a requirement. I have written about these issues at Open Ajax blog

The ONLY thing that is needed is...

[JustShootThemAll]

The ONLY thing that has to be added, and needs to be added about ten years ago, is a date input field in forms.

One that is locale-aware (DD-MM-YYYY, MM-DD-YYYY, or whatever you're locale used). Currently you have to jump through several hoops and it is near impossible to get a foolproof date input.

Re:The ONLY thing that is needed is...

[Unending]

Oh yes very much this.
The single biggest omission in HTML.

Re:The ONLY thing that is needed is...

[chord.wav]

Amen brother! Please make parent a sticky or a front page story.

Re:The ONLY thing that is needed is...

[thoglette]

....For people to use the @$#%#$^ing international standard for date.

http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/iso-date
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

Now, its certainly true that every webdeveloper has done their own date pattern. Which proably gets leap years _almost_ right. And I can't see a problem with adding a w3c supported common form.

But I'd rather have SVG support.

Re:The ONLY thing that is needed is...

[zobier]

I know what you're saying, however JSCalendar is a pretty cool if you don't mind JS.

Also, vote++ for a combo box.

Finally!

[TornCityVenz]

Finally Maybe someone can make that Tempest transition screen between pages I've been waiting for!

Flash is crossbrowser.. use it.

[tiago.cardoso]

There are a couple of developments in flash to port SVG to it. ImputDraw (http://www.mainada.net/inputdraw) lets you have a draw flash component online. But the new version will allow a big set of SVG in it. (here is a early demo: http://blog.tiagocardoso.eu/mainada/comics-sketch/2008/07/04/svg-viewer-demo/) Zoom in to see the beauty of SVG!!! :D

Re:Flash is crossbrowser.. use it.

[Unending]

Flash should never be a solution to anything IMO.
Really I don't think anything on the web should require a plugin to view.
Obviously this will never be true, but it is my ideal view of the web.

Re:Flash is crossbrowser.. use it.

[tiago.cardoso]

Isn't a browser a plugin to you OS ? I understand your point, but flash has a really big penetration. and resolves a lot of problems.. and is really crossbrowser.. Getting all the browser to go completely nsync in some matter will never happen. Nevertheless... trying to force it is a good action... but until we achieve it.. flash is a good real solution for now! :)

'Bout time

[rs79]

Oh sure, NOW people understand we need vector graphics.

I saw NeWS demo'd by sun in 84. I used native postscript extensively in 88+.

Then I watched html make a mess out of nearly everything to do with the network (html email? huh?).

Bout friggin time poeple woke up.

Re:'Bout time

[mweather]

The web has had vector graphics for years now. Ever heard of Flash? This is just native support for vector graphics.

Re:'Bout time

[da_flo]

This isn't quite what I'd call "native".

Re:'Bout time

[Anonymous Coward]

Well aren't you just the Jaded Mayor of Vector Graphics Town.

Re:Isn't that called VRML? -- No

[Culture20]

I suppose at a basic level they're the same thing; rendering a 2D image on the desktop from a mathematical function, but their implementations are very different. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics

"Override Close Button Event"

[Culture20]

Isn't there the possibility of data loss if I close the browser? Maybe they should implement an "Override Close/Exit Button Event" for that scenario.

it's WHAT time?

[poot_rootbeer]

Looks like that it is time for all browsers, in particular, IE, to seriously consider supporting standards-based vector graphics.

Right. How could Microsoft, a company with 90,000 employees and a market cap of over $250 Billion, possibly fail to respond to the desires of a hundred customers who spent a grand total of $0.00 on Internet Explorer?

Re:it's WHAT time?

[Mystra_x64]

You can make a donation to the MSIE dev team? RLY?

Canvas tag

[AntiPasto]

Well, in a lot of ways, SVG and all, the canvas tag, other DOM tricks let you do vector graphics already. Launched a web app the other day on app engine that queues up vectors fairly quickly for you... skibble is your multiuser napkin!

rich text copy-paste

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari can do it - why not everyone else? It's the only reason I occasionally use Safari over Firefox - for those occasional moments that I actually want to preserve links and formatting when copying part of a web page into an email or doc. If I were a better coder (or actually had "free time"?) I'd join the Mozilla project and implement it myself.

Re:You know, in case it comes up, am I the only on

[_xeno_]

That cross-domain security doesn't really solve a damned thing?

Remember the "Samy is my hero" MySpace virus? OK, the Wikipedia article calls it a "cross-site scripting vulnerability" but it wasn't, exactly. It was in the sense that MySpace was allowing JavaScript from user-supplied text to be sent to the client. But once inserted into his profile, it no longer crossed domains. It used AJAX to act with the user's credentials on the same domain.

Cross-domain security didn't do anything to protect against that because it was running on the same domain.

In short, it doesn't really solve anything and creates hosts of problems when you want to share data across domains. Yes, you can resort to sending all the data through the server, but that's fairly silly when there's no real reason the client couldn't access the data.

What really needs to be done is to figure out ways of securing the data coming back from requests, not creating this silly cross-domain rule that really doesn't solve anything and just creates problems. For example, "tainting" data returned from an AJAX request and disallowing it from being used in "eval" statements. Obviously there'd need to be a new "parseJSON" command to make up for that loss, but it would make receiving data from other domains safer. (Not perfectly safe, of course, but safer.)

Of course, that still wouldn't have protected against the "Samy is my hero" bug, but that demonstrates that even today we're moving to a web where you can wreak havoc without crossing domains.

I don't really have a "perfect answer" but loosening the cross-domain restrictions allows for new, more interesting web applications without resorting to same-domain proxy hacks.

NOT IN A DATABASE

[Anonymous Coward]

don't store the wishlist in a database, or they will sue !!!!!!!1

2D drawing and vector graphics?

[hkmwbz]

Among all the feature requests, 2D Drawing/Vector Graphics is clearly the most desired feature by the community.

So basically, Canvas and SVG? Both supported by Opera, Safari and Firefox (AFAIK). In fact, Opera currently has the best SVG implementation, period. Best Canvas support, I'm not sure, but since Apple invented it I guess that could be Safari.

Patent encumbered

[Anonymous Coward]

How behind is the Linux version in terms of features? Is Silverlight patent encumbered? Does MS reserve any right to first refusal for commercial applications? What other catches are there?

wishlist better not be stored in a database...

[Anonymous Coward]

or else it ain't gonna happen

They are going to get sued...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Channel Intelligence will be suing the OpenAjax Alliance's Community Wish List, as it is obviously stored in a database.

Vector Graphics

[antimatter15]

Just about every modern mainstream browser supports vector graphics in one form or another. obviously, its easier when they all follow a standard, but there are third party abstraction layers for all of them. Look at dojo.gfx, which provides an API for rendering in VML (IE), Silverlight (IE/Fx), SVG (Fx/Opera/Safari), and Canvas (Fx/Opera/Safari).

Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's just hope they aren't storing that wish list in a database.

Better Not Be In A Database

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they don't use a database to store that wish list (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/22/1913223).

Even Firefox doesn't have SVG pan/zoom controls

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

which IMHO makes it useless for large or intricate diagrams.

anti-Flash mythology

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why you would assert this as true, when anyone can research and learn it's not.

jd/adobe

"Adobe repeatedly refused to release an updated Flash plugin for Linux. That is why they skipped a version. They said they were done with Linux support. One guy kept pestering Adobe offering to code it for free, and the eventually let him create an updated Flash plugin. Allowing one man to do the work unpaid begrudgingly is not what I'd call supporting a platform."

XBL 2.0!!!

[ttfkam]

Vector graphics are window dressing. XBL is where it's at. With XBL you don't need any extra span tags in your main markup to act as a crutch for mismatches between your page structure and CSS. Just bind the element with XBL in your CSS and specify as many span tags as you like behind the scenes.

Combined with robust CSS support this also opens up possibilities for making HTML largely obsolete for web apps in favor of the markup syntax that best fits the problem at hand. What is a "p" tag after all but just some padding, margin, and perhaps some indentation on a block displayed element?

Once all is said and done, those vector graphics will make everything including online charts and games look nicer, but XBL 2.0 is the real main course.

Crap

[sconeu]

Now we'll be sued for using a wishlist!!!

Hardware requiremrnts for Silverlight?

[westlake]

The problem with such technologies is that they require powerful computers, with plenty of RAM (and probably a fast video card), and a solid user base.
.

The desktop base for Windows is approaching 70% for XP and 20% for Vista.
OSX 8% 2% for W2K.

Top Operating System Share Trend

You can muck about with these trend lines , but mostly what happens is that OSX grows a little bit faster and Vista a little bit slower.

Install Silverlight

Compatible Operating Systems and Browsers

Windows Vista
IE7, Firefox 1.5+
Windows XP SP2
IE7, IE6, Firefox 1.5+
OSX 10,4.8
Firefox 1.5+, Safari

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Windows
X86 or X64 500 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM
PowerPC
Mac G4 800 MHz, 128MB RAM
MacIntel
Core Duo 1.83 GHz, 128 MB RAM

Re:Hardware requiremrnts for Silverlight?

[adonoman]

Note that if you have an older Athlon without SSE, you won't be able to install Silverlight even if you're well over that 500 MHz mark.

Adobe had a chance

[ndvaughan]

When they bought Macromedia and built Flex as an RIA platform, they had a chance to contribute (open source) a solid SVG implementation that could have re-invigorated SVG (and SMIL) as a web standard. Dynamic, scriptable vector images, fully interactive graphics, animation, etc., would be easily created, distributed, searchable, and compatible with all browsers. They could have led the effort to improve other web standards to include (in a more elegant way) asynchronous services to the browser.

Instead, they decided to have MXML (which is pretty darn close to the SVG format) compile to Flash binary to the browser via an <embed> tag. WTF? Software companies who build their own models without standards face an uphill battle in getting people that are used to the expansive compatibility of the web to buy in to their binary browser plug-in model. Plug-ins are good and all, but they should not be depended upon for the majority of site content. That's why the web took off as much as it did - standards have enabled site authors to feel comfortable in investing time and effort in building web sites that are guaranteed to reach the maximum number of people.

MS and Adobe (and Apple to a certain degree) are shooting themselves in the collective foot by coming up with their own standards for new content. The web will not significantly improve until they come together and build a common framework that allows the content-creators to know that their stuff is able to be searched for and seen by everyone. They forget to quickly that the explosive success of the internet is owed to this fact.

just make sure

[gaboalonso]

this wish list isn't stored on a DataBase... They might get sued.

Vector graphics, now

[Froggie]

dojox.gfx - SVG for SVG browsers, VML for non-SVG browsers, working right now as part of the dojo toolkit. Admittedly it's cruft you shouldn't need, but it means you have compatible vector graphics on IE6, IE7, FF, Safari (iPhone included) and Opera. And it's available now.

Yes, I'd sooner see SVG working at the page level on IE. But if and when it arrives, it *still* won't be compatible with everyone else's implementations...

IE50% on http://svg.startpagina.nl

[Anonymous Coward]

http://svg.startpagina.nl shows how broad the spectrum of SVG usage is. Recently Mozilla passed IE in the running 2008 total of visitors

MOD PARENT +1 TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

ahahahhahaa

window dressing is needed to sell a technology

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree XBL rules. But as implementation(s) is/are lacking you won't even be able to sell it much to the few developers that understand its power

just use SMIL, let libraries be fallback

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use SMIL in Firefox now, by using libraries like fakeSMILe

Wish list

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I hope for them that they didn't put this list in a database (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/07/22/1913223.shtml)

The customers behind the browsers

[tepples]

If there are (for example) three top browsers including IE, and the other two support SVG, then most modern browsers would support SVG.

I could manipulate that statistic to say that "most modern browsers" support any pet technology. I'd have to implement the technology in Gecko and release two dozen rebranded Iceweasel builds that support it. But when you make a public web site, you aren't trying to reach browsers; you're trying to reach the customers behind the browsers. This means "most modern browsers" aren't all that relevant if the majority of your site's viewers do not use "most modern browsers".

Re:The customers behind the browsers

[CrazedSanity]

I see your point, but I think you may have missed mine: originally, we were talking about how "modern browsers, and not the how many users each has. There may be 15 million people that use BrowserA, 200 million that use BrowserB, and 8 thousand that use BrowserC: while there are are 223 million people, there are still only three browsers.

If we were to compare this to fathers: FatherA has 50 children, FatherB has 8, and FatherC has 2; B and C give 100% financial support to their children, while A gives none. There are still only 3 fathers. Your logic would state that "most modern fathers don't support their children" (purely based on the number of children each has), whilst my logic says that most fathers do (2 is still greater than 1).

There's lies, damn lies, and statistics. Don't mistake logic for statistics: logic is immutable; statistics say that 80% of statistics are 50% hype, 40% too narrow, and 10% other; the other 20% is just plain garbage.

Adobe SVG plug-in for IE

[mounthood]

Adobe has an SVG plug-in for IE, but they also have a much better "beta" version (it's been beta for >3 years.)

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

Are there any free hosting sites?

[acheron12]

None of the free image hosting websites I've looked at (e.g. imageshack) support .svg files. I'd call this a niche market opportunity, but I have no clue how imageshack makes a profit in the first place...

broad spectrum of vector graphics examples

[Anonymous Coward]

svg.startpagina.nl
(broad spectrum of SVG examples)