Notes to Self (Others may read and comment, of course)
Scalable Vector Graphics are cool.
I have done three things with SVGs.
The problem is, SVGs are taken from Apple. Firefox has them implemented, and they are cool.
But only Firefox has them. This means that anything I write with SVGs, I write for those who use Firefox. That, accourding to W3Schools, is about a third of the net. Which means that it is unusable by about two thirds of the net. Which isn't cool.
I believe it'll get there. I remember when only Netscape had PNG support. (And remember that PNGs were developed because of patent issues with GIFs. I still have a "Unisys Sucks" refrigerator magnet around here somewhere.) Last time I seriously played around with transparent PNGs, I recall that IE had problems with the transparency of them. Of course, I think that was 2 or 3 major versions ago.
I've always done much more on the server than the client. Why? Because the server is always going to be the server, and if you can do a thing on the server, you can always do that thing on the server. For everybody. I hate putting up those little "This might not work for you if you don't run Browser X" things. That's so last century.
I have done three things with SVGs.
- A clock. Or, rather, various clocks. I think an analog clock is the "Hello World" of graphics programming.
- A guitar scale tool, which displays a fake guitar neck (Fender-style, of course) and places dots on the neck corresponding to the notes of the scale.
- A cool thing inspired by the cover of circa 1978 World Book Encyclopedias, where there's a circle with points equally distributed, and lines drawn from each point to each other point. It looks satanic when the number of points is 5. It looks awesome when the number is over 40.
The problem is, SVGs are taken from Apple. Firefox has them implemented, and they are cool.
But only Firefox has them. This means that anything I write with SVGs, I write for those who use Firefox. That, accourding to W3Schools, is about a third of the net. Which means that it is unusable by about two thirds of the net. Which isn't cool.
I believe it'll get there. I remember when only Netscape had PNG support. (And remember that PNGs were developed because of patent issues with GIFs. I still have a "Unisys Sucks" refrigerator magnet around here somewhere.) Last time I seriously played around with transparent PNGs, I recall that IE had problems with the transparency of them. Of course, I think that was 2 or 3 major versions ago.
I've always done much more on the server than the client. Why? Because the server is always going to be the server, and if you can do a thing on the server, you can always do that thing on the server. For everybody. I hate putting up those little "This might not work for you if you don't run Browser X" things. That's so last century.