SVG. The way forward or a blind alley?

[Egg Bramhill]

I've been hearing of the virtues of svg for at least four years now and to date it really doesn't appear to have made the impact of the early hype.

I've no axe to grind either way, but I've yet to see a breakthrough in this file types usage. I've only come across one web site that used an svg file as an integral part of the site. All the other svg files I have encountered have been to demonstrate svg's capabilities, but not as an integral part of a standard web site.

It would appear to me that the main thrust for using svg at present is within vector file exchange, via import / export filters.

Is this as good as it gets?

[Soquili]

It does appear that support for SVG is declining rather than progressing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics

The wikipedia article states that Adobe has announced it will discontinue their SVG browser plugin on January 1, 2008.

From the article it also appears that very few browsers support full SVG specifications.

I think I remember some posts about SVG being the up and coming 'new' thing. Is any technology that is 6 years old or older (1998?) ready to sweep the vector graphics industry?

Like Egg, I don't have any Axe to grind. But I would like to know if SVG will become more available or slowly evaporate.

[handrawn]

can't get worked up about web-site design I'm afraid - not my scene at all - but it does seem to me to be chicken and egg:

not much browser support means not many web-sites use it
not many web-sites using it means little pressure on browsers to comply fully

Images on a web site in SVG vector would be fully manipulative too - this is going to be a dis-incentive to many - the web is already a free-for-all.

I could be put right on that one of course just my view

SVG is a very powerful file format, and whether that was the original intention or not is moot..

SVG is an open standard
SVG is easily editable directly
SVG is the best alternative to PDF for illustration vectors [as opposed to CAD etc] - so no surprise then if adobe is backing off from SVG, especially now they own flash.....

[GeoBen]

well, of course, many of the W3C standards have been slow to become real world standards. MS recalcitrance being a large part of the cause. FF and Opera have pushed MS into a certain complaince on some issues, but they still have one foot firmly stuck in their own yard. Strict compliance is slow to come. Even the W3C's own browser (Amaya) is only partial at present. Is there some slowdown due to the need to implement the technology even as it continues to be developed?

I think that the assertion that SVG is a superior image format for the web is inarguable. I mean, how long a go did we accept it's equivalent for text, bezier over raster fonts?

So? why do we not see more SVG image based webpages? For the same reason that png has not become accepted widely; MS/IE does not support it and the majority of net users use IE and if you want viewers to view your site, you trail along after Bill and his boys, like it or no and blah, blah etc.

people will continue to employ bitmap formats (.png, increasing now that MS has capitulated) in order to maintain 'ownership' of their images, but the majority of new image material on the web is non-proprietary (if we are willing to discount all the 'clipart purveyors', and I for one, am).

the notion that ideas can be owned (in the sense that technologies can be employed as an expression of ideas) is definitely on the wane. Some of the most sophisticated software ideas are opening up. The technology that Pixar used for many of it's most well received motion pictures is now available in open source.

As Steve mentioned, their will be further resistance now that Adobe owns Flash (did I just hear a penny drop?) and this will doubtless mean that SVG's full implementation will depend on a more scriptable environment. At present, JavaScript is still the main means of animating SVG on the web and JS can not 'contain' the animation in the way that Flash can, but that is simply one more hurdle. The speed with which increasing numbers of people can receive data from the web has obviated one of SVG's biggest advantages over bitmaps, but realtime, photorealistic motion imaging (theoretically possible in SVG and, at present, only in SVG) is on the horizon. Consider, for instance, that SVG's relationship to its container (the browser) and it's scriptability makes it possible to have the image/animation respond to its environment, a feature that Flash does not have and likely, never will. On a simple level, this will mean images and animations that are aware of the size and the shape of their container, can become aware of changes to them and change themselves in response. On a somewhat grander scale, animations that are 'aware' of other content in the page and are capable, via logic embedded IN the animation, to modify or even create new content.

I think SVG or some new technology born of SVG is indeed the future.

[Soquili]

So? why do we not see more SVG image based webpages? For the same reason that png has not become accepted widely; MS/IE does not support it and the majority of net users use IE and if you want viewers to view your site, you trail along after Bill and his boys, like it or no and blah, blah etc.

GeoBen I think you may have found the remaining nail to SVG's coffin. At least as web page support is concerned. From what I have read the last day or so SVG is used more often on CellPhones and PDAs. But MS has been working on that front for some time with Windows CE, I think the latest version of CE is 5.0.

MS/IE will be supporting XAML as SilverLight. There is already a beta plugin available.

SVG is another form of XML.

[GeoBen]

yes, but Silverlight is really a competitor for contained XML imaging, yes? a competitor for Flash, putting themselves in the unusual position of competing with a stronger opponent. It extends their .net empire, but it's still external to the browser (requires a plugin) and it cannot interact with the browser or the rest of the browser content, though, as many developers do with Flash, Silverlight can be used as the entirety of the content itself.

one more self-defining pseudo-standard.

MS reminds me of them fellas ya usta know back in high school that would stick a finger into yer drink and then tell you that they will drink it if you won't.

geo.

[magmy]

Svg is great, since it is an open standard, since it is Xml, and since it is supported by many products. I don't know of any other object-oriented picture format that can compete with Svg is all these areas. Please implement both svg import and export.

[Unregistered]

SVG will remain alive with some artificial breathing assistance in LINUX machines.

It is barely noticeable now and I doubt if even half a percent of the World Graphics Artist even bother with it at all.

[Egg Bramhill]

Yes, I think to become a standard a file type needs to reach a critical mass. SVG has never come close to this, perhaps due to a monopoly by swf files, and I can't see it happening now.