Microsoft Wants To Participate In SVG Development 292
rossendryv writes "After many years of fighting against the standard, Microsoft announced they are joining the WC3's SVG working group to help with the development of SVG. 'We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next-generation Web platform,' said Patrick Dengler, senior program manager on Microsoft's Internet Explorer team in a blog post."
LOL. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Funny, funny.
Oh thank you so very much.... NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure their help will be just like that they gave to the development of OpenGL.
This Should Be Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
So you basically want a say in which direction the spec takes from now on without having proven to anyone that you are truly committed to this?
Or is this some hilarious attempt to sidle in at the last moment and hope everyone forgets about your blatant disregard for SVG and make it seem like SVG had always been in your plans but you're only now just getting around to it?
I mean, you're looking mighty foolish now no matter which route you take.
All that angst and animosity aside, I applaud this action. Get it implemented in IE right now so I can start writing crap that utilizes basic graphics without having to post an unnecessarily large image for a flow chart and we can start to carve down the Flash usage out there.
Fixed (Score:5, Insightful)
We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next generation Web platform. As evidenced by our ongoing involvement in W3C working groups, we are committed to participating in the standards process to subvert those standards to our benefit. Our involvement with the SVG working group builds on that commitment.
Fixed that for you.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Until Microsoft commits to supporting SVG in IE it is hard to see Microsoft's supposed support of the standard as anything but disingenuous. As you point out, Microsoft's position at this point is ridiculous. Not only has Microsoft been actively promoting an SVG competitor, but the primary reason why SVG isn't ubiquitous is the fact that SVG is not supported in Internet Explorer.
Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Torpedo? (Score:0, Insightful)
Common sense does not exist. It is a concept invented by those who wish to use the appeal of populism to push their own agenda. In this particular case, you are using the populist idea that the UN is "bad" to push the idea that Microsoft should be restricted from participating in the SVG group. No doubt you stand to gain because you are either a Mac or Linux advocate.
Personally, I'd rather not see either the SVG working group or the UN start to arbitrarily ban members for having the "wrong" opinions.
Re:Torpedo? (Score:1, Insightful)
66.43% of browsers do not support SVG (Score:2, Insightful)
Resist! its just OOXML all over again (Score:4, Insightful)
Here we go again: http://noooxml.wikidot.com
"Committee stuffing is a standard practice for Microsoft. Microsoft raped ISO with their office file formats, leaving the organization in limbo. The whole campaign against the format have raised an army of people, which are furious about the dirty tactics used by Microsoft to get the broken standard through ISO. This anger won't go away, and I wish good luck to Microsoft to get it adopted by governments. The reputation of Microsoft went down below zero with this process."
Executable code, here we come (Score:5, Insightful)
You just know that Microsoft will try to stick in some way to embed executable code, so SVG files can invoke "platform specific services".
Besides, without that, it won't be useful for viruses and trojans.
There's an old saying about Microsoft.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Embrace <-- you are here
Extend
Extinguish
That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as Microsoft implements the current SVG standards in IE, they should be welcomed into the process of refining the standards further.
Until they implement the current SVG standards, they should be kept away.
[Opinions mine, not IBM's.]
Re:Oh thank you so very much.... NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1: Embrace />
Status: In Progress <laughter type="maniacal"
Step 2: Extend
Status: Inevitable
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
Your point is well taken. But don't count Silverlight out yet. The sole fact that Netflix uses it for their streaming service is reason enough.
-Peter
Which is the sole reason I dont use NetFlix. Or watch videos on Microsoft's site.
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
While I can identify with your position, if boycotts by the technologically conscious were by any means effective, Internet Explorer would have shriveled and died in the '90s.
-Peter
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
So, we'll implement something we'll call SVG, but only once the spec is changed to support Microsoft-only technologies.
Like, say, that it must be implemented as an ActiveX control...
Re:Executable code, here we come (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, there already is the ability to add scripts (as in every browser, usually JavaScript) to SVG, just like you would with XHTML, since both are XML-based. So MS could simply expose an API to JS. Oh wait, it already does that! (ActiveX, even partially DirectX.)
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
It's certainly a nice thought (for them), but it won't work. As goes YouTube, so goes the Internet. Nothing Microsoft can do about that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if IE9 at a bare minimum supports <video> and <audio> It's such a simple thing to hack into the engine that even they should be able to pull it off without any fuss.
SVG, that's a bit trickier, but they do have that VML renderer lying around.
Re:Silverlight is the fastest growing plugin... (Score:4, Insightful)
I never did figure out what Silverlight was for. I went to one site that required it (cant even remember what the site was for), tried to install it but it refused to work.
Never found a need for it since.
Off-topic: use modifiers (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider using modifiers to your advantage.
I often find "Offtopic", "Overrated" and "Flamebait" to be more like "I don't like it". "Troll" is often funnier than "Funny". "Redundant" is usually OK but rarely used. So I am using a positive modifier to almost everything (except anonymous postings) and moderation now serves me to mark postings which were compelling enough for someone to moderate them.
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what improves security and performance? Streaming a damn MPEG file and let us decode it with our plugin of choice. Flash and Silverlight are a terrible choice for videos.
Re:Translation: (Score:3, Insightful)
Its likely that they will work and being the defaco SVG viewer for the windows platform and initally do some good work thus making it pointless for anyone else to continue to develop a svg viewer for the windows platform.. once they have established themselves.. they will undoubtedly start to add "Features" to svg that require MS API's... Much like they did with java..
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I can't see a single problem with Silverlight that doesn't exist within flash, including "OtherOS" support. We all know what Adobe is like when it comes to supporting 64bit Linux.
Then again, I honestly haven't had much use for flash over the last couple of years other than watching videos, something I'm hoping that will accomplish just as well. The only times I've needed flash other than this were when certain websites have, quite literally, forced me to use it, usually as part of some rediculous sign up process.
Silverlight is in much the same boat, albeit with a much smaller usage so I don't really see why people dislike it so much. It's no better or worse than flash, but at least it's a competitor, which one day might help the situation.
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
I do hope they don't join just to ruin the standard or offer halfassed support for it.
Why else *would* they join?
Re:Translation: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is the sole reason I dont use NetFlix. Or watch videos on Microsoft's site.
I've seen this response many times, yet I have never seen a reasonable explanation for the boycott. Do you hate Silverlight because it's Microsoft or is there something wrong with the technology that has made you stay away?
In my case: It doesn't work with my OS.
Whether or not that constitutes "something wrong with the technology" is something of a point of contention between me and Microsoft.
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely none. They just do not want to since it does not align with their business need of a monopoly. Typically, if they embrace a competing item, it is because it is catching on, and they are losing ground.
Re:Silverlight is the fastest growing plugin... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. I've just never (except once) come across it. Maybe it is completely unpopular and not used. Maybe the name is non-descriptive. Maybe it's pointless as other plugins do whatever its supposed to do.
Maybe I have better things to do rather than track down the latest crap fad.
Why silverlight is hated (Score:5, Insightful)
All the browsers except one (go ahead, guess which one) are becoming capable enough to do a lot of animation and tricks that people used to put in flash, themselves.
Flash itself is hated because it ruins the web, it locks up data in an executable that can't be indexed.
And then, MS comes along and rather then improve its browser to support standards, it adds a flash copy. Who needs it? Do we REALLY want to go back to the days of the web bubble where you had a dozen plugins begging to be installed? Bad enough that flash survived, we don't need a new one.
It also ruins the browser experience for those who have trouble with sight. The rest of the web can be spoken or enlarged or contrast changed (not IE) but that doesn't work for plugins.
The only use I seen for silverlight is to embed video. Why introduce yet another closed source player when it would have been trivial for MS to just support the video tag.
Make no mistake, silverlight is nothing more then activex 2.0. Yet another attempt by MS to turn the browser into a windows only experience.
Re:Call me a conformist... (Score:3, Insightful)
support XHTML as an XML instance rather than as an HTML extension of an SGML instance. Then at last, I won't have to have a fix for <textarea /> , <div />, <script /> problems that arise after normalising XHTML documents.
More likely you'll just end up staring at "xml parsing error, mismatched tag" all day long. Honestly, why people ever started backing a way of working that completely breaks down with even the smallest vagueness in what crosses the wire is beyond me. Good design is liberal in what it accepts and strict in what it puts out. Generating valid XHTML but parsing it as tag soup, that's the right way to go about things.
Re:LOL. (Score:3, Insightful)
Coming soon to a computer near you: "MSSVG; it's almost SVG!"
Oh, I can't wait to find out what all the neato, Windows-specific incompatibilities are going to be!
I was kinda happy with MS not joining in any standards, atleast that way the standards remain standard.
mmmhmm (Score:4, Insightful)
We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next-generation Web platform.
Translation: Since the overwhelming majority of vendors is on board with it, we don't want to be left out in the cold
Re:Executable code, here we come (Score:3, Insightful)
Its already there, its called foreign objects, and MS had nothing to do with its introduction. Of course depending on your definition you might want to count the fact that it supports scripting and that the scripting interface is extensible allowing for fully standard compliant SVG files using script parsers that don't exist yet.
If you had a clue, you might realize that pretty much every document format in use has a way to do so on every OS.
The need to embed executable code in order to render other objects is something most standards designers actually plan on when developing these standards. Its called forwards compatibility and extensibility.
I'm sorry that you feel in order for documents to be useful they have to be a pain in the ass to view and require you to meet some unknown list of installed dependancies before you view it. I really do hope that at some point you realize that embedding 'platform specific services' and 'executable code' directly in documents is not a MS invention and is done by everyone, including your web browser (with the exception of Lynx perhaps).
It amazes me how ignorant people can be and still get modded insightful. You use applications and document formats that do this all day long, yet you only shout when MS does it.
Seriously, stop being such a douche fanboy and get a clue before you start talking again.
Re:Translation: (Score:3, Insightful)
.SVG will really open up the CAD market as well, so watch out for Autodesk, in fact they will suffer farm more harm than M$.
SVG, if wildly successful, will have no impact on AutoCAD, very little impact on any other Autdesk product.
Re:Why silverlight is hated (Score:1, Insightful)
wierd, cause...silverlight runs on mac, windows (also on firefox), and linux (via moonlight). Photosynth and other deepzoom implementations each required thier own implementations of browser plugins (which had to be created for each browser) before they were ported to silverlight. And Silverlight has the capability to be indexed, thereby addressing some of the same problems that flash causes.
Another point you mention is the requirement to install a bunch of plugins..and not wanting to go back to those days. However a platform like Flash or Silverlight directly addresses that aspect..when they become umbiquitous they allow for developers to have a platform upon which to build several different applications without having to cause users to reinstall over and over again.
ActiveX was an elevation model..if you allowed an activex app to run, you had to give it full trust. Flash and silverlight both run in sandboxes with varying levels of security applied to them. If there is a security exploit, it can be fixed in one place vs. several.
I think that you haven't really tried to undertsand the technology, and I think it's ironic that you bash aspects of flash which silverlight specifically addresses. Both Adobe and Microsoft have made great leaps in the recent years to make these extension models (which is really what they are) of the browsers more powerful. By end of year both will have full acceleration for video cards, and give web designers yet more powerful tools to create web applications.
Re: Enlarging...Silverlight and flash are both scalar based and support zooming..it's on the app developers to support accessability. Ignorant design that doesnt take into account fundamentals is crappy design, doesnt matter if the host (browser, OS, etc.) supports it or not.
Here's Why (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you hate Silverlight because it's Microsoft
It's reason enough.
After observing a few decades anticompetitive behavior, punctuated with six years during which they utterly and completely neglected Internet Explorer -- the world's primary window to the web -- two things seem pretty apparent to me:
1) Despite all their talk about developers, developers, developers, when they can get away with it, they care about developers not one bit. If they did, some minimal effort towards fixing some of the more egregious problems with IE might have been made, instead of pushing the problems out onto the backs of hundreds of thousands of web authors who had to figure out how to circumvent bugs and irregularities.
2) It's quite likely they'd like pull an embrace-extend-extinguish with the web as whole if they can pull it off. And if they get critical mass for RIAs with Silverlight, they might even be able to pull it off. I don't care how good Silverlight is -- and I've been impressed with some things -- I'm not at all interested in that future.
Re:Translation: (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally, I can't see a single problem with Silverlight that doesn't exist within flash, including "OtherOS" support. We all know what Adobe is like when it comes to supporting 64bit Linux.
How about the fact that MS has a direct interest in sabotaging/degrading people's web/multi-media experience in "OtherOS", whereas Adobe doesn't?
Re:Why silverlight is hated (Score:3, Insightful)
Really - show me a site that supports moonlight's dated version of silverlight.
Show me what microsoft has done to help the linux folks out on pushing mono to 3.5 (or 3.0) so that we can get that support.
I can watch hulu and youtube with no problems on my 64 bit machine. I cannot watch netflix.