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Google Brings SVG Support To IE
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."
From the project page: "No downloads or plugins are necessary other than Flash ..."
But Internet Explorer's lack of built-in support for SVG was keeping it away from mainstream use on the web.
Yes! Internet Explorer may finally be ready for mainstream use.
It's not bad performance, and useful for applets, but you don't want to use it for layout unless having dozens of little flash applets all over the page turns you on.
How long before a new version of IE develops incompatibility problems with this extension?
How long until Google or someone else hacks around this?
Now Microsoft doesn't need to do it anymore. Is this a good thing then? Nice move on Google's part though.
It's a bad thing that Google needs to fix basic functionality in a competitor's product. But it shows one more time why Google is good and why Microsoft is mediocre.
It would be easier for them to just add SVG support.
Can we get rid of IE already, please? Just stop caring about it, and use open standards. If they won't adapt, tough luck.
That plugin was always slow and only supported a very limited subset of svg.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Despite the video being very very dry, there was an interesting link in the middle of the presentation: http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/
That site features real time download statistics for FF3.5. The interesting part is, that the map at the top is rendered in real SVG combined with canvas (for the dots).
About this flash based library: it's strange. At the demo page the native rendering of SVG failed and only the flash version worked on my FF 3.0.x.. Not a problem with my browser though, as the site I mentioned at the top as well as Wikipedia SVG's work fine. Something is not right with this library, but interesting non the less.
Microsoft is becoming AOL. A crappy, proprietary, expensive, unreliable impediment to getting onto the internet. Their applications have plateaued, and open-source desktop and web-based competitors are improving rapidly. They'll hang on longer, but they've begun their long decline.
I'm sorry, but I see this response a lot and I honestly have to say...have you ever actually run a website before? Alienating your potential audience over something like this is not really the best way to go about things. Yeah, maybe put up a notice somewhere about it, but really, telling them to just screw off is not actually a solution. It just makes your site look like crap to all the people using IE. The people that still use IE6 and such aren't the type of people to know or care why your site is broken...they just think you have a broken site.
I completely understand your hate of IE...I can't tell you how many times I've had to go "fix" my website designs because of IE6...it drives me completely insane. On the other hand, you simply cannot ignore these things. Being a good web designer means you unfortunately need to compensate.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Yeah, and if everybody keep thinking that then IE will never go away. Just display the message "Your are trying to view this webpage with a non-standard browser. Please use Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Opera." Seriously, is that so hard? Even Google did this trick with YouTube for IE6. Well... if Google can do that then why can't you?
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I'll agree you don't want to alienate your audience just because they're using a broken browser, but that is not what being a "good" web designer is about.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
As a website builder, svg is more then just pictures, if i had it available to me i would create entire websites using it. ( xhtml+svg )
why?
because then i can finally present people with websites that look exactly the same everywhere and fill your entire browser screen.
dynamic design, dynamic fonts, dynamic everything. no more fixed layout design.
While i don't thing this new plugin is going to be the holy grail, it love to see them push in the right direction :)
Sorry, I once worked on a site, where we got 16 million visits *a day*! And that's only for the top country.
And your attitude is the very reason we are in this situation.
You always cave in, when you fear you could lose some users. It's so pathetic.
No, don't make links non-underlined! We will lose users!
No, don't stop supporting that browser! We will lose users!
No, don't change the design! We will lose users!
etc, etc, etc.
It's the knock-out argument for all change.
And while others innovate, you keep running behind them, always trying to catch up.
While your user base turns into the most stubborn, spoiled and dumb that is possible.
They will totally dominate you instead of you dominating them.
If you ever read something about leadership, you will understand, that you can only lead, if you do what *you* want, and stand behind that, not caring what the mob/crowd thinks.
Because they will *want* to follow you, if you are a role model, *knowing* what is right.
Of course this won't give you *all* users. Because when you're greedy and want them all, it's pretty much guaranteed that you will be left with even less than if you would have just let those follow you, that want you for what you are.
Yes, it's the same thing as in love and friendship relationships.
And as always, this time it's the leaders again, who will drop support for the IE first. Those sites, where people don't go because the sites are trying to do it right for everybody, but because they're so cool and worth so much to them, that people will do anything to still be able to use their site.
And soon you will follow them. When you notice that half your user base is already lost to them.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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!
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.
:P
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
If you look at Silverlight (or XAML or XPS) you'll see a lot of things that resemble SVG. It would be trivial for MS to support SVG, but they choose not too. The probably don't want anything to compete with Silverlight adoption.
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Even supporting IE at all means withholding features. That can make sense for supporting IE 7/8, which hold about 40% of the browser market.
IE6 only holds about 15% of the browser market, and requires extreme measures to support. If Google, a 150 billion dollar corporation, can't be bothered to support it in something as simple as a webmail client or video portal, why should the little guy struggle to support it in a complex web app?