"the desktop people don't know how to deal with mobile devices" I resemble that remark. But not for lack of trying. I tried to experiment with my old phone, which I bought because of marketing that said it was the first J2ME enabled phone in North America. I went through enormous effort and came up with an arrangement at home that might sort of allow me to make some toy programs for it.
(By the way, the rest of my complaint - er, comment comes from a mostly Canadian perspective - I realize things are structured differently elsewhere and would like to hear about differences.) The fundamental contradiction with SVG on a phone is that we're pushing an open standard for a closed system. I'm really dissapointed in the state of the mobile world. Big companies are pushing to get the kind of adoption of Internet technologies on the phone that we've all experienced on desktops and they have been pushing for years. Then they wonder why nobody's come to the party. The barriers to entry on mobile phones are too high for any independent developer. The independent developers that built some of the most notable parts of the web. The independent developers that played with open technologies on the public that had minimal barriers to entry. The independent developers who talked to their friends and showed them cool stuff in a way that marketers now call "viral" and love. None of that initial "cool" that was there for the web is even possible on a phone with todays market. In North America, service providers want to charge you for every button you push and won't even tell you what it'll cost to push that button. They market high end phones then disable access to the hardware that you're interested in. They re-spin the same tired corporate-developed applications from last year's grey phone on to this year's colour phone. I've given up on fighting to play in their walled garden. Now SVG comes along with a mobile profile and instead of the mobile companies implementing the standard, we see features pushed in to a Vector Graphics standard to support details of the network layer and audio. I haven't read all of SVGT but I know I'm not the first to question these features ( http://blog.codedread.com/archives/2006/04/20/audio-in-web-pages/ and http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2005May/0171.html for example). Sorry for the rant, I don't think it's anything that hasn't been said before, but I have issues with vendors of closed networks and closed hardware pretending to be interested in open standards. I think your observation that "the mobile market is either unaware or terrified of the potential of the static web capabilities" gets to the heart of the difference I'm talking about. The mobile companies see the potential for another boom like the web had but don't know how to get it. The problem is that the only way to ignite this boom is to give away some control. Control over content delivery, access to the network, hardware platforms, something. The wide audience has to have permission to play so that a tiny group from that audience can do something cool. The problem is that giving away any of this control is risky at best and most likely a colossal financial failure for the specific company that gives it up. So I'm not holding my breath. Rob Russell http://www.getsvg.com/forum --- In [email protected], Ronan Oger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I have a suspicion that mobile-web compatibility will drive technological > survival of RIA technology. > > Apparently, 1/4 of mobile phone users now use the web with their device. > > This implies that content which does not work on mobile devices in a year or > two it will not remain relevant very long. > > Sadly, the desktop people don't know how to deal with mobile devices, and the > mobile market is either unaware or terrified of the potential of the static > web capabilities. > > Adobe is pushing Flex2 hard now and is working hard to get flash onto the > mobiles. One thing is for sure, Adobe know what they are doing in the RIA > world. After all, isn't it them who added RIA functionality to SVG? > > For XAML, it will be interesting to see if MS ever manages to grow it outside > of the specialised win32/BigDesktop context that it has painted it into. > Given the growing impact of mobile devices on the internet landscape (), and > since I suspect that XAML will not be on mobiles for years, I propose that > the winner of the RIA contest will be the technology that works on mobiles. > > SVGT1.2 shows huge promise on the mobile context, but is unsupported in IE and > unless IE suddenly grows its own SVG wings, it will increasingly act as a > lowest-common-denominator brake on internet SVG content for RIAs. > > I wish I could say that SVG-based RIAs are supported on mobile devices, but I > can not really say. Representatives of the mobile viewer vendors have told me > that their content supports Ajax-esque or getURL/postURL/parseXML/DOM-insert > functionality in SVG, but nobody seem able/interested to either prove this or > to show content that they even claim works on some device. I have been > building RIA proofs of concept since 2002 and have never seen a mobile > capable of round-tripping data in SVG. > > If the mobile svg platform people get their act together and recognise how > close they are to winning (or losing) their technological battle, then my > vote is on SVG due to its standards compliance. However, if Bitflash and > Ikivo they allow Adobe to steamroll over them and fail to educate the svg > content people and fail to deliver the technical solution that meets RIA > needs on mobiles, then I believe that the RIA technowinner will be > Flash/Flex/whatever-its-called. > > Ronan > > On Thursday 20 April 2006 01:40, Robert Russell wrote: > > I don't think it's Flash that SVG is really going to go head to head > > against but XAML. I'm guessing that people are going to start forming > > up around either new MS stuff or W3C stuff for their RIA (Rich > > Internet Applications - I didn't invent it, I'm just using it because > > we all know what it is) development. > > > > It's just an idea I've had floating around since I started noticing > > the pieces that you'd need to compete against MS with open source (or > > just non-MS) tools. > > > > SVG is not the entirety of that suite, but it's one important part. > > > > --- In [email protected], Bill Thoen <bthoen@> wrote: > > > a_spit_wad wrote: > > > >Strictly looking at the number of posts on this board, 2002 and 2003 > > > >looks like the golden years. > > > > > > > >Are developers posting in another forum or is SVG dying a slow death? > > > > > > I've noticed that too, and I've heard it from at least one other ex-SVG > > > developer (contrasted with a few yeas ago, when everybody was saying it > > > was going to triumph over Flash and anything else.) However, it was > > > Firefox 1.5's built-in SVG support that got me interested in SVG again, > > > so maybe developments such as this will revitalize it in other people's > > > minds too. Also, an open source MapInfo MIF to SVG translator that I > > > wrote for the MapInfo environment (ftp://ftp.gisnet.com/pub > > > > /MI2SVG.zip) > > > > > has been my second-most popular download for the last couple of years, > > > so I don't think SVG is dead just yet. > > > > > > But if the browser developers don't get it together and make all > > > implementations conform to the SAME standard in the next year or so, I > > > think people are going to get tired of stupid hassles like that and > > > they'll be looking to try something else. > > > > > > - Bill Thoen > > > > ----- > > 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 > > > > > > > > -- > Ronan Oger > Director > RO IT Systems GmbH > ...Building Web2.0 with SVG since 2001 > > http://www.roitsystems.com > ----- 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/
