Microsoft has applied to join the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Scalable Vector Graphics working group. I would say ten years to late, but they did it. So will all the examples on this site work in Explorer soon. I hope, but I fear not. Let’s explain that to you.

One of the reasons I write critically about Microsoft is that they’re trying to slowdown internet innovation, probably best illustrated by the so called Embrace, extend and extinguish strategy, which had the purpose to extend open standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors.

As a consequence, and another big reason I don’t like Microsoft, they push the time and costs of developing websites by approximately 40%. Simply because you have to write your JavaScript twice, can’t use modern CSS and lose a lot of time fixing lay-out bugs. That’s the price the world is paying for the Microsoft dominance in the browser market. Other estimations go about 20-30%, the well know Dutch developer PPK on quirksmode “Want a site that works perfectly in IE6? Fine, but it’ll cost you about 20 to 30% extra.”. (Costs of JavaScript libraries are excluded here).

I think Microsoft used that strategy and I think they were successful. Actually Microsoft stopped developing their browser form 2001 till 2007. Second thought: there is only one way that Microsoft will change that strategy, loss of market share. That didn’t really happen, at least not on a big scale, seems that most consumers don’t even know the word browser, Explorer worked out of the box, the blue e on your windows desktop was a synonym for internet, and Opera or Firefox a program for hackers or activists. Most sites used Activex, or other proprietary JavaScript, so a lot of sites didn’t work in Opera, actually they were designed (deliberately) to only work in Internet Explorer.

Now Google (and to a lesser extent Apple) entered the browser-market, things are starting to change. At least the web is gonna change: sites do not longer contain information, they contain applications.

And when you use web-applications, you don’t need them as a stand-alone program. That’s the danger for Microsoft. It’s not new, it has always been there and Microsoft knew. That’s why they made their browser `a critical part of their operating system`, technically nonsense, but they reached their goal. I took the EC a few years to refute that claim, a few years Microsoft made a lot of money.

Why didn’t Microsoft embrace SVG earlier. Well they developed Vector Markup Language (VML) during the nineties. That didn’t became a standard, so I guess they decided to stop doing anything for 5 years. Now Microsoft gained some substantial marketshare with Silverlight, a Flash/SVG comparable technology, which it’s used a lot for streaming Media lately, they probably think let’s join the SVG working group to – these are my words – see if we can slowdown their activities.

Will we see SVG support in Explorer 9. I bet not!

I always liked Opera’s support for SVG, and I really welcomed their initiative to treat SVG as any other image type, like jpg or gif or png. After all SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is a vector-image  mark up language (XML), like Flash or Silverlight but free and it’s an Open Standard.

Round corners, gradients, multi-image background, watermarks, nearly everything (animation?) can be handled by SVG, so it’s quite a powerful feature. Creating a dataURL of SVG is possible, so creating a CSS file with several gradient backgrounds, round borders is indeed a very efficient way of designing webpages. It’s cached, and although the initial css file is a bit heavier, no extra server requests are needed  to load additional images. It’s fast, lean and flexible.

I’m glad to see Google Chrome as the first other main browser join Opera in support for SVG images as backgrounds in CSS declarations.

SVG support as background image in Google Chrome

Chrome’s implementation isn’t without errors, see what happens if you start scrolling the webpage in the brand new Chrome for Linux beta, but is a start. I hope Mozilla/Firefox and Apple/Webkit will follow soon.

Google Chrome rendering issues SVG background

I’ve given up expectations for Microsoft Explorer, see my other post. To be short: they wanna sell their Silverlight.

I’m not without any hope, , I hope Internet Explorer users will start using other webstandard compliant browsers and consequently MS marketshare will drop significantly. Only then they probably will convert to an attitude of supporting and promoting open standards.

Lorre is now talking SVG to a lot more people:

<object
   data="http://dev.webonomic.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/parrot.svgz"
   codetype="image/svg+xml"
   style="width:300px;margin:0 auto;display:block;">
</object>

I visited the zoo, brought my camera, shot a parrot (Don’t worry he is still living, I don’t go back to the petshop to reclaim.)

I reduced colors in Gimp, saved as PNG, did a bit tracing in Inkscape with Potrace and here is the SVG Parrot from Amsterdam!

Format is SVGZ, weight ca 60kb.
Opera can show svg as IMG src, I dunno about other browers, but it would be nice if they can. It’s easy to upload and insert in a WordPress blog that way.

<img
  src="http://dev.webonomic.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/parrot.svgz"
   alt="Parrot in SVG"
   title="Parrot in SVG"
   class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-292" />

Intro

There is a lot going on in the CSS3 and HTML5 development. Rounded borders (radius) and multi-image backgrounds are both supported in latest Safari/Webkit and Firefox beta’s. Opera has always been a pioneer with CSS and SVG support and has chosen to walk a more interesting road. Opera gives you the opportunity to treat SVG objects as any other image including background image declared in CSS. An SVG-object as a background options gives you all the power of radius and multi-image background plus a lot more: stars, ellipse, triangles, multi-images, animated background and easy javascript driven user customisable backgrounds.

Examples

Let’s have some examples.

SVG backgrounds are really nice and powerful. SVG can be used for gradients, rounded corners, watermarks, graphics and even animated backgrounds. SVG can also be used for list style images for and <li> elements in ordered and unordered lists.

There is a bug though. If you give a div a border there are rendering issues as you can see here.

Screenshot in Opera 9.6

Example 1  Background

Example 2 Background with border

Example 3 Background with padding

Example 4 Background with border and padding