Re: no-namespace href in SVG

Hi, Maciej-

Maciej Stachowiak wrote (on 10/11/2007 5:07 PM):
> 
> On Oct 11, 2007, at 9:09 AM, Doug Schepers wrote:
> 
>> It would still be backwards-incompatible.  New content (that only used 
>> 'null:href') would not work in SVG1.1 UAs.  Right now, the most 
>> popular and functional plugin (ASV) for the most popular browser (IE) 
>> is no longer being updated, so the largest user base would not be able 
>> to use links in new SVG content.
> 
> Are there actually more users of ASV than of SVG-capable versions of 
> Safari, Opera and Firefox (which are actively being updated)? I honestly 
> don't know the answer but I expect ASV's market share is much smaller 
> than IE's total, and it's unclear if its adoption rate is greater than 
> that of natively SVG-capable browsers.

I don't know the answer either, and my expectation is that it is 
dropping, proportionally, as time goes by.  If I had some way to gauge 
that, I'd be very interested to do so.  Possibly we could find the sites 
that have the most hits for "SVG", and ask them to donate their logs; I 
suspect Adobe has some good records there. ;)

There are still a lot of ASV users out there, partly because Adobe 
aggressively deployed it, and partly because, frankly, it has been the 
most performant and richly featured SVG viewer.  Opera is very rapidly 
catching up in performance (if it hasn't already caught up), and has 
passed it in lots of very cool features (especially in Opera 9.5)... 
they are kicking serious ass.  Both Firefox and Safari are showing rapid 
improvement in both categories as well, though both still lack 
declarative animation and SVG fonts (IIRC).

I don't know if native SVG support in the other browsers will put 
significant market pressure on IE to implement SVG, but it may.  At that 
point, with active development on all major browsers, there will be 
breathing room to consider enhancements like this.


>> Finally, I don't see how you read, "that's worth considering" as 
>> "dismiss it out of hand".
> 
> Fair enough. It sounded like you thought this would be a major change 
> and have only theoretical benefits, which sounds like dismissal to me. 
> Acknowledging that the change may have some benefits and may be 
> technically feasible, and filing the issue in bugzilla, are pretty clear 
> signs that you are considering it.

Certainly.  My concerns are not completely ameliorated, and I don't 
speak for the entire SVG WG, but open standards need to be flexible in 
order to compete with proprietary formats.  I'm also sensitive to ease 
of authoring.  If this truly is something that helps authors create and 
deploy SVG content, then it deserves serious examination.


Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Staff Contact, SVG, CDF, and WebAPI

Received on Thursday, 11 October 2007 21:48:21 UTC