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Google Brings SVG Support To IE

Posted by Soulskill on from the quickest-way-to-get-something-done dept.

stelt writes "Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is in most graphical tools. It is used heavily in many big projects, such as KDE and Wikipedia. But Internet Explorer's lack of built-in support for SVG was keeping it away from mainstream use on the web. Google is fixing that now with a JavaScript drop-in named SVGWeb. They've posted a quick, one-minute overview, a longer and more detailed presentation, and you can read about it on the project page."

4 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Lame. by iYk6 · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the project page: "No downloads or plugins are necessary other than Flash ..."

    1. Re:Lame. by jopsen · · Score: 3, Informative

      My concern is that many websites that use SVG will require Flash on all browsers, not just the ones using IE.

      Quote from the quick start:

      By default we use the Flash based renderer on Internet Explorer while using the native SVG support on other browsers like Firefox and Safari.

      You can override this manually, but why would anyone do that for other purposes than debugging...?

  2. Re:Incompatibility Problems by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since when is IE NOT mainstream? They have over 90% of the market?

    Welcome to 2009, IE has ~60% usage and falling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

    --
    Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
  3. Re:Incompatibility Problems by Fallen+Seraph · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well for one thing, Google's plugin can automatically or programatically switch between embedding using flash and embedding it natively. Additionally, Adobe has discontinued their support for the SVG plugin for IE, since Adobe owns Flash now. This Google plugin also works on ALL browsers using JavaScript, and Flash for rendering. So the user doesn't have to install a separate plugin for SVG, like IE had to, and it brings more support for SMIL, which Firefox can't do natively yet, as well as the HTML5 audio and video elements, which Microsoft currently have no plans to support.

    This has the potential to do things like allow you to use the HTML5 video tag indiscriminately, and have it render natively where it's supported, and have it default to Flash where it's not. And finally, if you've ever done a lot of work with SVG, you'd notice that the Adobe plugin often renders scenes in drastically different ways than native implementations. Basically, it was to SVG what IE6 was to the web: a broken implementation. Google's project is still in it's early incarnation and already surpasses the Adobe plugin. Hopefully in the next year or so, it'll match native implementations well enough to allow web developers to use SVG and SMIL, and not have to worry about legacy browser compatibility.

    And if you'd watched the one minute video running through it, you'd know most of this :P