SVG demo

[Ted Gould]

On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 11:03 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
>   It seems the SVG community views mobile devices as the primary
> future platform for SVG.  The fact is that Adobe is pushing Flash in
> mobile phones and it looks like this will be the dominant standard.

Just because Adobe is pushing it doesn't make it the dominate standard.
Macromedia has been pushing Flash in the mobile space for as long as I
can remember phones having color screens.  I doubt this will go away.

>   Technologically, Flash will work as the flash player is relatively
> simple, portable, and lightweight.  And these features are central to
> the Flash standard.  

I wouldn't say that at all.  The Flash player is relatively complex, but
the fact that you can buy it from Adobe as a binary blob makes it easy
for OEMs to integrate.  If nothing else, choosing flash player requires
you to have two ECMA Script implementations in your device.

But, at the same time, you can get an SVG implementation by choosing
Opera as your browser choice.  They'll give you an easy to integrate
binary also.

http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/
http://weblog.infoworld.com/realitycheck/archives/2007/06/_opera_to_repla.html

> SVG interpretation is not easy (I believe there was something called
> TinySVG that was designed for mobiles?).  

I think implementing from scratch they are about the same.  Well, except
that the current version of Flash has video and SVG doesn't.  So that
would probably make Flash harder as you need to implement a video CODEC.

> Flash is inheritly more compressed in its format, SVG is huge (those
> long sets of coordinate pairs). 

SVG is designed for Gzip.  I think anyone seriously using it for a
mobile platform gzips their files.  When Gzip'd, the files are about the
same size.  Plus, the W3C is finishing up a standard for XML Schema
based binary file compression that should get even smaller.
Specifically, this is designed for the mobile market.

>   People are constantly arguing over what the standards will be for
> the mobile world, they forget that the important standards for ie.
> wide area networks didn't come from the commercial sector, and until
> we get some action from the FCC, these 'standards' are likely to come
> in and out with the tide. 

Well, until the FCC regulates HTML I'm not going to use this new fangled
interweb thing!  ;)

Seriously though, defacto standards are real and something designers and
content producers need to watch.  Yes, it's likely things will change,
but there will eventually be some stability in a changing market.  I
doubt most people design their websites for HTML 1 today, though many
still do for non-CSS browsers.

>   I personally see a lot of potential for SVG in 'rich apps' for the
> web.  Its 'viewport' system is really powerful and when used in
> conjunction with video would be a powerful platform for artists and
> 'creative people'.  SVG will, without a doubt, continue to act as an
> interchange format for graphic design. 

I think there is a lot of potential there too.  In general, I'm excited
about SVG as a tool.  We'll see where it ends up going, but that's the
case with any standard.  I think that SVG is at the point today where
you can start using in on your website.

>   Ted, I know youve done a lot of really great stuff with SVG and I
> applaud you for it... but lets be realistic in our estimations here.

I don't think SVG has 'won' or anything like that.  But, I don't think
Flash has either.  I'm still cheering for SVG to come out of this battle
as the victor.  I think that any fan of open standards should.  If
nothing else specs like JSR-226 help that a lot:

http://wiki.svg.org/index.php?title=JSR_226

>           So if you want to do
>         something cool on an iPhone, you can't use Flash. 
>
>  Are you sure Flash does not run on the Iphone?  -jmz

It doesn't now, but it is rumored to be coming:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/iphone/iphone-adobe-flash-support-coming-275317.php

Personally, I hope they leave it out :)

		--Ted


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