I would much rather pay for good quality information than have the quality of the information available to me deteriorate because it is corrupted by unrelated content.
Perhaps this new advertising scheme, this bastardization of the Web, will be the motivation to move many of the higher-quality web services to subscription-based income.
Adobe just released a developer preview release of Adobe SVG Viewer 6.0 which includes support for both of the SVG 1.2 specification versions of the audio and video elements.
The SVG 1.0 specification includes support for SMIL animation and interactivity which means that you can have declarative animation and interactivity that doesn't require JavaScript. The Adobe SVG Viewer has supported this since version 1.0. And SVG and ASV also support full JavaScript control of the SVG DOM, of course.
A new SVG 1.2 draft specification was just published last Tuesday. It describes two things that may help provide the user interface elements you need.
First, the SVG Working Group is looking at supporting XForms in SVG.
Second, there is new feature for rendering custom content ("RCC") which would allow people to create sharable SVG components (kind of like Java Beans).
SVG and Flash are like JPEG and GIF. They are optimized for different uses, with some overlap.
Just as JPEG is best for photos and GIF is best for illustrations, Flash is best for banner ads and cartoons while SVG is best for business graphics.
Here are some reasons to use SVG instead of Flash:
SVG is an open standard that is directed by many companies representing many industries, and SVG's survival and direction don't depend on any one company.
SVG is XML-based, so it can be generated on the server easily with existing legacy systems that work with HTML and XML.
SVG leverages standards that most developers are already familiar with (XML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript), so it's easy to learn and use.
Just like HTML, SVG can be hand-coded. Developers can easily share code, and no authoring tool is required.
SVG is not pre-rendered, which provides more flexibility for client-side interactivity.
SVG supports accessibility (user style sheets for user control of contrast and font size, audible rendering of descriptive content, etc.).
An active forum for SVG developers
on
SVG On the Rise
·
· Score: 1
One of the most active forums for SVG developers is the SVG Developers Yahoo group.
Re:SVG not (yet?) for presentation
on
SVG On the Rise
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Adobe SVG Viewer 3 also supports a SMIL 2 implementation of an audio element which can be synchronized with animations. This would allow you to synchronize your audio narration with your vector graphics animations.
Version 4 of Adobe SVG Viewer (renamed Adobe Image Viewer) also supports synchronization of video elements. Unfortunately Adobe Image Viewer only supports viewing SVG files that are embedded in Acrobat PDF files.
Before you go off and spend time building something, do the math:
if hours * hourly / (1 - taxrate) + cog < x then build it yourself else buy something pre-built
Where:
hours = the number of hours it'll take you to research, order, assemble, and debug your machine, and install the operating system and drivers
hourly = your hourly rate (roughly salary/2000)
cog = cost of the materials
taxrate = your tax rate (e.g. 0.38)
x = cost of an equivalent pre-assembled machine
If you know enough to assemble a machine like this you're probably paid highly enough that it's not worth your time, and you're better off buying something pre-assembled.
I recently read the book Make the Most of your Mind by Tony Buzan, and I really, really wish that someone had given it to me before I went to college. It would have made my study life so much less painful.
When I was a CS undergraduate, I took the designing user interfaces course. As part of the coursework, I designed a voice activated interface (this was at a time when such things didn't exist). Various other students imagined how other interfaces of the future might work. Some of the ideas we came up with were great.
Now, we could have all patented the ideas we came up with, and since then I'm sure some of our patents would have been infringed, and we could have licenced and sued. But would it make sense to do that? What if all undergraduate students did it? New developments in the software world would grind to a halt.
This happens all the time, and in fact helps drive commercial software development. Professors and their students patent new ideas as part of the paper publication process. If you read the fine print you'll discover that your school owns the right to any intellectual property that you invent while using their resources, and universities commonly license these patents to large corporations (like Microsoft).
You forgot the awesome support of all the browsers out there. Yeah, Macromedia cut a deal with the major browsers to ship Flash in the basic install (95%+ of browsers out there).
The Adobe SVG Viewer ships with Acrobat Reader and is therefore already installed on most systems today. It's not installed on as many systems as Flash is, but it's still a viable alternative.
Not to mention all the kick-ass development tools for SVG. Wow, for quickly developing state-of-the-art sites, they stomp Macromedia Flash and Adobe Live Motion!
Ya know, not every W3 technology has busted out onto the seen like a big dog. Flash is ubquitous [sic]. Get used to it.
Changing a whole industry takes time. And just because something unpleasant is ubiquitous doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to find an alternative.
Oh... And I do have Mozilla/Linux installed with the SVG plugin... Just show me one thing that's cool out there. just one.
The "Fluent Solutions/Adobe Theater demo" at the Adobe SVG demos page is very cool. But coolness is subjective.
You don't have to like SVG any more than you like Flash, but as with anything else it's important to have the freedom of choice. SVG and Flash both have their uses, just like JPEG and GIF.
There have been many posts here that raise concerns about the use of Flash in an HTML environment. For those of you who are not happy with Flash, I suggest that you consider developing content with HTML+SVG, instead. Here's why:
Slashdot Mirror
I would much rather pay for good quality information than have the quality of the information available to me deteriorate because it is corrupted by unrelated content.
Perhaps this new advertising scheme, this bastardization of the Web, will be the motivation to move many of the higher-quality web services to subscription-based income.
Won't Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Bill Gates III KBE be surprised when the Queen summons them to fight for Great Britain in her next war.
I guess the British are concerned with Information Warfare, after all.
The Adobe SVG Viewer has supported a variation on the SMIL audio element since version 1.0 (released in 2000).
The SVG 1.2 draft specification incorporates support for the SMIL audio and video elements.
Adobe just released a developer preview release of Adobe SVG Viewer 6.0 which includes support for both of the SVG 1.2 specification versions of the audio and video elements.
The SVG 1.0 specification includes support for SMIL animation and interactivity which means that you can have declarative animation and interactivity that doesn't require JavaScript. The Adobe SVG Viewer has supported this since version 1.0. And SVG and ASV also support full JavaScript control of the SVG DOM, of course.
A new SVG 1.2 draft specification was just published last Tuesday. It describes two things that may help provide the user interface elements you need.
First, the SVG Working Group is looking at supporting XForms in SVG.
Second, there is new feature for rendering custom content ("RCC") which would allow people to create sharable SVG components (kind of like Java Beans).
SVG and Flash are like JPEG and GIF. They are optimized for different uses, with some overlap.
Just as JPEG is best for photos and GIF is best for illustrations, Flash is best for banner ads and cartoons while SVG is best for business graphics.
Here are some reasons to use SVG instead of Flash:
One of the most active forums for SVG developers is the SVG Developers Yahoo group.
Version 4 of Adobe SVG Viewer (renamed Adobe Image Viewer) also supports synchronization of video elements. Unfortunately Adobe Image Viewer only supports viewing SVG files that are embedded in Acrobat PDF files.
Shoutcast is a great source of streaming music.
My personal favorite radio station is Proton Radio. Extremly reliable, and great stuff.
Before you go off and spend time building something, do the math:
Where:
hours = the number of hours it'll take you to research, order, assemble, and debug your machine, and install the operating system and drivers
hourly = your hourly rate (roughly salary/2000)
cog = cost of the materials
taxrate = your tax rate (e.g. 0.38)
x = cost of an equivalent pre-assembled machine
If you know enough to assemble a machine like this you're probably paid highly enough that it's not worth your time, and you're better off buying something pre-assembled.
I recently read the book Make the Most of your Mind by Tony Buzan, and I really, really wish that someone had given it to me before I went to college. It would have made my study life so much less painful.
...but have you ever actually tried to make a living by selling your own software? If not, then you are not qualified to comment.
When I was a CS undergraduate, I took the designing user interfaces course. As part of the coursework, I designed a voice activated interface (this was at a time when such things didn't exist). Various other students imagined how other interfaces of the future might work. Some of the ideas we came up with were great.
Now, we could have all patented the ideas we came up with, and since then I'm sure some of our patents would have been infringed, and we could have licenced and sued. But would it make sense to do that? What if all undergraduate students did it? New developments in the software world would grind to a halt.
This happens all the time, and in fact helps drive commercial software development. Professors and their students patent new ideas as part of the paper publication process. If you read the fine print you'll discover that your school owns the right to any intellectual property that you invent while using their resources, and universities commonly license these patents to large corporations (like Microsoft).
The Adobe SVG Viewer ships with Acrobat Reader and is therefore already installed on most systems today. It's not installed on as many systems as Flash is, but it's still a viable alternative.
There are a few nice native SVG editors that do a pretty good job given the fact that these are still very early days for this technolgy. There are also many established vector editors that export SVG.
Changing a whole industry takes time. And just because something unpleasant is ubiquitous doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to find an alternative.
The "Fluent Solutions/Adobe Theater demo" at the Adobe SVG demos page is very cool. But coolness is subjective.
You don't have to like SVG any more than you like Flash, but as with anything else it's important to have the freedom of choice. SVG and Flash both have their uses, just like JPEG and GIF.