"this page requires that you download the chiquita 3d plugin in order to view the great content offered here", comes just a click before i leave some imaginary site (and never return).
unfortunately svg is just that to the standard visitor of your site!!! this is, in my opinion the core problem in svg not reaching a wider audience. people don't know it, so they won't use it! i think that simply displaying a message "you have to get a svg viewer before you can continue" is no solution to that problem at all! giving the user detailed installation instructions may help. if i had to make a guess, about how many users were able to successfully download and install a plugin on their own, that would be around 50%. thus, i have to tell them where to get it, and what to do with it (after clicking the download link, press "save"..., find the downloaded file and install by doubleclicking...., follow the onscreen intructions, close and restart your browser,.....). telling the user about many available plugins out there will definitely also turn them away, so i will have to make a clear recommendation, preferrable a plugin that gives to user some sense of familiarity, an advantage that "adobe" definitely has. at least people will be familiar with the brand "adobe", so they will maybe stick with you in the installation process. then, if you want users to accept that extra effort they have to make to view your content, you should have some serious quality to offer, otherwise they will get the same content at some flash powered site (where they don't have to install anything). so while you try to reach that goal, your code reaches a level of complexity that will make it hard to display it equally well in every svg enabled device. content that is good enough to actually attract people is complex, and that naturally will lead to some specific programming for one specific plugin. of course you can go for the "least common denominator" in all of those plugins, but that will decrease the quality of your product significately (one plugin may not display filters very well, another may not do something else too good, and so on) in the end, you have a product that is just as good as all bad habits of all plugins mixed together. another important point is that we are not coding svg for a svg audience, i think we should be coding svg for a non svg audience. so, while svg is at it's current status, it may well be that users install svg just to see your site. seeing it that way, not explicitly considering somebody using some exotic svg plugin on an exotic operating systems seems absolutely ok to me. in reality, i will not turn many people away at all while i will keep many of those non-svg people with me (those people that my content was aimed at in the first place). considering all of the above i think that it is perfectly fine to test for one single plugin and also to recommend that one single plugin only. as a benefit i can adapt my code in a way that makes it possible to view it in other implementations as long as i dont have to reduce the quality of my content just to serve some inferior viewer. best regards, hannes ----- To unsubscribe send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -or- visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers and click "edit my membership" ---- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
