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Monday, November 23, 2009

New SVG Web Release: Gelatinous Cube

Just in time for Thanksgiving is another SVG Web release. Our tradition is to name SVG Web releases after monsters from D&D just to increase the geek factor, so in that spirit our release name this time is "Gelatinous Cube":

The Gelatinous Cube is a truly horrifying creature:

A gelatinous cube looks like a transparent ooze of mindless, gelatinous matter in the shape of a cube. It slides through dungeon corridors, absorbing everything in its path, digesting everything organic and secreting non-digestible matter in its wake. Contact with its exterior can result in a paralyzing electric shock, after which the cube will proceed to slowly digest its stunned and helpless prey.
Fun times.

Highlights of this release, thanks to many many people helping with patches, bug testing, and more:
The full list of issues fixed:
Our featured SVG Web project this release is the work Michael Neutze has been doing which he shipped last week:

Today the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (think census bureau
or national statistics) published their latest population projection
for Germany until the year 2060 and updated their animated population
pyramid. It had been ASV3 only when it was first introduced in 2003,
then in 2006 it was ASV3 plus native browsers (Firefox 1.5+, Safari
3+, Opera 9+) and now it uses SVG Web.

Apart from supporting Internet Explorer SVG Web was a great choice for
mixing SVG and HTML. Population projections only make sense when you
know the assumptions and those can now be displayed side by side with
the population pyramid using standard HTML and CSS. New in this
release is also the ability to switch between four different
scenarios.

SVG Web's small size (only three files), minimal requirements on the
server-side and the ability to use standard markup were the main
selling points.

Check it out for yourself, it is available in English, French, German
and Russian at
http://www.destatis.de/bevoelkerungspyramide/

Watch a short screencast in english to see all it can do
http://vimeo.com/7687560
Learn more about SVG Web:About SVG Web and SVG:

SVG Web is a JavaScript library which provides SVG support on many browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. Using the library plus native SVG support you can instantly target close to 100% of the existing installed web base. SVG itself stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, an open standard that is part of the HTML 5 family of technologies for interactive, search-engine friendly web vector graphics.

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Saying Goodbye to Dojo

Dojo has been good to me. I remember in 2005 when I was a whee JavaScript programmer hacking around with weird stuff like AMASS to do client-side storage when Alex Russell contacted me and asked me to port the work over to Dojo. I was blown away; what an opportunity! I had heard of Dojo but never thought I would get the chance to contribute.

Being a part of the Dojo project has been an amazing opportunity for me. Dojo Storage helped legitimize the idea of doing client-side storage, and the experience working on it helped shape parts of the HTML5 Local Storage API when it was being developed. Creating Dojo Offline went from crazy prototype idea to real shipping code thanks to SitePen and Google, and led to my involvement with Gears and also helped shape aspects of the HTML5 Offline work.

And what an awesome community Dojo is! I got a chance to meet fellow JavaScript hackers who had a mad gleam in their eye on trying out some interesting new scheme to try out in the browser. I consider many Dojo-ites close friends and colleagues and continue enjoying meeting up and scheming strange browser ideas.

The last year and a half, though, I really haven't been able to be a part of the Dojo community, and I don't see that changing. Dojo Storage and Dojo Offline are being used by real users and real sites but I simply haven't had the bandwidth to fix important bugs or add new functionality. There comes a time when an open source programmer has to admit that they simply can't juggle so many balls in the air at once.

I've essentially left the Dojo community the last year and a half but consider this blog post more formal. Other things have swept me up and forced my time. I can no longer maintain Dojo Storage and Dojo Offline. This is a great chance for the users and developers who use both of these packages to step up to maintain them and continue developing them; I pass the baton to you. You won't be sorry being a part of Dojo; I know I haven't.

I wish I was good at everything; I'm obviously not ;) The particular thing I'm good at is coming up with some strange new idea, then doing several passes of engineering and work to make it real and bring it to a shippable state and get it past the 'giggle factor'. I've done this with things like Really Simple History, coworking, and more. I'm good at the 0.1, 1.0, and 2.0 phases. Past that, I'm not particularly good. I guess the wisdom of 'old age' is accepting your strengths and weaknesses ;)

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

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Monday, October 12, 2009

New SVG Web Release: Beholder

Yowsers! It's another release of SVG Web, this time code named Beholder:

According to the classic D&D Monster Manual, the Beholder is an "aggressive and avaricious spherical monster that is most frequently found underground." In other words, you don't want to bump into this guy in a back alley.

This release, roughly about 1 month of work, has contributions from many users and developers. We've knocked out a bunch of bugs and features. The full release list:

Download the new release, read the Quick Start guide, and visit the SVG Web home page.

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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Open Web Developer Network IRC Meeting for September 16th, 2009 Summary

We had another IRC meeting for the Open Web Developer Network (owdn.org) today. Here's a short summary for those that missed it:


This was a work meeting, with people working on owdn.org while in IRC. Initial focus for 0.1 will be Doctype (reference section); View Source (demos + cookbook section); and State of the Open Web (initially an aggregator section). Chris Messina is working on mockups of the home page, Doctype, and View Source. One tension in terms of design is that Mediawiki is ugly and difficult to skin; once we have a design Brad has volunteered to do the actual coding. The Mediawiki Foundation was going to host our wiki, but there is concern on their part in terms of the customization we want to do and hosting third-party code within their cluster. Brad will continue to investigate commercial Mediawiki options and might set up an instance on his web host and point owdn.org to it for now. Brad will also begin to create sample content for View Source to understand what is needed there. Next meetup will be a few weeks after the SVG Open conference which is in two weeks and which will keep Brad occupied for the next two weeks. Scheduling for the next meeting will happen after SVG Open (beginning of October).

Full IRC log at http://groups.google.com/group/openweb-group/web/IRCSeptember16th_2009

Current proposal: http://groups.google.com/group/openweb-group/web/openweb-org-proposal

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New SVG Web Release: Umber Hulk

Hear ye! Hear ye! The SVG Web team has pushed out another release, code named Umber Hulk:


Umber Hulk: "A human-shaped creature with gaping maws flanked by pairs of exceedingly sharp mandibles. Despite their bestial appearance, umber hulks possess a significant intelligence and language of their own."

Notable highlights of this release:
and much much more. Special thanks to the many people who helped with this one:
Full list of bugs knocked out in this release:
Please keep in mind SVG Web is still in alpha.

Learn more:

About SVG Web and SVG:

SVG Web is a JavaScript library which provides SVG support on many browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. Using the library plus native SVG support you can instantly target close to 100% of the existing installed web base. SVG itself stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, an open standard that is part of the HTML 5 family of technologies for interactive, search-engine friendly web vector graphics.

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Wednesday, September 09, 2009

New SVG Web Release: Owlbear

Hi everyone, the SVG Web team has another release packed with lots of goodness.

Starting now we are giving releases not only a date stamp but also simple names, taken from the classic Fiend Folio D&D monster manual. Why? Because the world needs more cheesy release names.

Notable highlights of the svgweb-2009-09-09 release, also known as the Owlbear release ("Terrifying: the body of a bear... the head of an owl"):

* View source - You can now right click on an Flash SVG image and view the SVG source
* Huge improvements to the resizing code - the size of SVG objects on the page now change based on the zoom factor, resizing the window, etc.
* Performance improvements
* The demo.html file is much more robust now
* getScreenCTM, matrix inversions, createSVGPoint, and SVGPoint.matrixTransform are now implemented
* The internal JavaScript architecture has been cleaned up and simplified for Internet Explorer

Please keep in mind SVG Web is still in alpha.

Learn more:
* Full release note details
* svgweb-2009-09-09-Owlbear.zip Download
* SVG Web Home Page
* 1 Minute Introduction to SVG Web
* Quick Start Guide

About SVG Web and SVG:

SVG Web is a JavaScript library which provides SVG support on many browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. Using the library plus native SVG support you can instantly target close to 100% of the existing installed web base. SVG itself stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, an open standard that is part of the HTML 5 family of technologies for interactive, search-engine friendly web vector graphics.

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