Hi folks, I want to alert the SVG community to a variation on SVG that might prove interesting over the long haul for interactive vector graphics.
First, a bit of background. I left Adobe in May to join IBM where I am leading a new industry initiative, the OpenAjax Alliance. This alliance represents the collaborative work of 50+ organizations in the Ajax commmunity, with members including IBM, Sun, Google, Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, Oracle, SAP, BEA, TIBCO, SoftwareAG, Eclipse Foundation, Intel, Novell, RedHat, Borland, Dojo Foundation, Zimbra (leaders behind the Kabuki toolkit), Zend (the PHP company), Backbase, Jackbe, Icesoft, Laszlo, and Nexaweb.The chief goal is to accelerate customer success with Ajax by promoting a customer's ability to mix and match solutions from Ajax technology providers and by helping to drive the future of the Ajax ecosystem. (Unfortunately, our web site, www.openajaxalliance.org, hasn't launched yet due to the need for approvals by appropriate committees. It should launch sometime this month. In the meantime, if you want more information on OpenAjax, send me a private email.) The term "Ajax" has both a narrow and broad meaning. The original (narrow) meaning of "AJAX" was about leveraging XMLHttpRequest to provide the low-level technology in order to achieve partial screen updates and thus a smoother user experience for HTML applications. Nowadays, the term "Ajax" often refers to the broader notion of delivering rich user experiences leveraging the native features found within web browsers. Ajax frameworks include Ajax user interface toolkits (such as Dojo or Script.aculo.us) , Ajax IDEs (such as Eclipse and Netbeans), and server products such as the Google WebToolkit.. Using this broader definition of Ajax, Ajax technology providers deliver an "Ajax engine" that takes a cross-platform, browser-independent definition of the web application and then performs an "Ajax transformation" which produces appropriate HTML+JavaScript (and sometimes SVG!) to produce the desired rich user experience. One particularly interesting development on the Ajax front is recent addition of 2D graphics support within some commercial products and open source projects. One such development is the Dojo2D project (http://dojo.jot.com/Dojo2D), which uses a subset of SVG as input. On browsers that support SVG, Dojo2D passes the SVG through to the browser. On IE, it transcodes the SVG into VML. From what I hear, a first version of Dojo2D is likely to ship within an upcoming release of the Dojo toolkit sometime soon (probably before the year is out). Mid-release downloads for the open source tree of course are available today. Google does something similar today with Google Maps (i.e., SVG on Firefox and VML on IE). Other announcements in Ajax/SVG space are forthcoming. Therefore, developers who want 2D graphics and want to realize the benefits of open standards (e.g., cross-platform support and multiple suppliers) should key on eye out on Ajax toolkits that offer SVG support. Jon Jon Ferraiolo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Web Architect, Emerging Technologies IBM, Menlo Park, CA Doug Schepers <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > To Sent by: [email protected] [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc hoogroups.com Subject Re: [svg-developers] Is Adobe's 09/07/2006 08:33 greed clearing the way for XAML AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] hoogroups.com Hi, Geoffrey- Yes, I for one welcome our new vector format overlords. ;) I do agree that Flash is a little underpowered in the programming side (from what I've seen). But XAML is way too overworked. I think SVG is in a sweet spot between the two, and it's based on standards that are widely implemented. We don't know yet how SVG in IE will play out, but I'm not ready to jump ship yet. Regards- -Doug Geoffrey Swenson wrote: > By abandoning SVG, the net effect for us and Adobe is that XAML is going to > be the way to go. > > > > Unless Adobe massively changes Flash to have a decent editor and improves > the ease of programming I just don't see it gaining a lot of developer > interest. Why should I pay almost $1000 for Flash and its tedious, > user-hostile graphic editor, the non-intuitive and overly animation-focused > timeline editor, when the same $1000 buys me the MSDN library including XAML > that was designed from the ground up to be a programmable graphical > environment? > > > > If you don't have $1000 for MSDN, just Notepad and a good XAML book && > online help should get you a long ways, especially for web-based stuff. > > > > Microsoft can leverage their position as the largest software company to > make XAML a very complete solution in a way that nobody else can manage. I'm > sure that it will be, as usual, somewhat overdeveloped and bloated, but > since it is part of the graphical underpinnings of Vista, they must have got > it to work, unlike - for example - Firefox SVG which is still way behind the > soon-to-be-orphaned Adobe plug-in. > > > > If I am going to have to pick one technology, I'll take the one that runs on > most of the computers. I am also picking the one that makes development > easy. If it happens to be Open Source, fine, but if XAML ends up being the > way to go, so be it. It really helps to have a revenue stream to pay for a > lot of talented work. Just 5% of Microsoft's Vista budget is hundreds of > millions of dollars - even Adobe does not have that kind of money to spend > on this. > > > > By early next year IE7 and Vista will be released. Almost everyone running > XP will be automatically upgraded to IE7, so coverage will be fairly large > in a few weeks after the release. > > > > I don't agree with the reviewers that think that Vista / IE7 are a warmed > over copy of Apple and Firefox. Perhaps the user interfaces are nothing > really new, but under the hood is a whole host of improvements are going to > make development of custom graphical applications a lot easier. XAML is at > the core of this, and I am looking forward to it. ----- 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 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ----- To unsubscribe send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -or- visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers and click "edit my membership" ---- Yahoo! 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