One technology that’s ready to take the step up onto the big stage is SVG. If you’re not sure what that is, its Wikipedia entry provides a good summary:
SVG is an XML markup language for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and animated.
That’s a pretty big deal; static or animated images which are marked up with XML, meaning you can use the DOM to manipulate them. Interactive images; imagine the possibilities!
I’ve moved to my new domain: www.Broken-Links.com (no, I don’t like the hyphen either). RSS Feeds should be updated automatically, and all old links should redirect here… fingers crossed…
Gecko is the rendering engine used in browsers such as Firefox, SeaMonkey, Camino, Epiphany, Netscape, and more.
The next version (1.9, currently available as a preview release) introduces a whole load of new features and fixes to the engine. In my last post I mentioned the speed increase thanks to the move to a new graphics layer and changes to rendering order, as well as support for the APNG format and fixes to the CSS to allow it to pass the Acid2 test. But there’s more. Here are some new features of interest to developers:
Mozilla have announced the release of Gran Paradiso Alpha 3, the latest step on the road to Firefox 3.
Notable in this release is support for the APNG format, which aims to provide the simple animation style of GIFs, but with the advantage of PNG’s transparency support. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any of the examples to work.
After the issue of the overhauled CSS3 Text module recently, I wonder if the Fonts module is due for similar treatment? The current working draft states:
The working group believes this draft is stable and it therefore issues a last call for comments, before requesting the status of Candidate Recommendation for the draft. The deadline for comments is 30 August 2002.
Four and a half years ago! That’s a long feedback process!
An introductory tutorial to Dynamic Text Replacement. The formatting of the page could be better, but it’s a well-written guide.
I’ve started using the sIFR method on a few sites, and it’s pretty useful; it does introduce a whole new set of challenges to your development, however — notably with the use of z-index and transparency, especially in IE (of course) — so use with caution.
For no particular reason other than idle curiosity, I made a demo of a broken neon sign, using CSS Animations (you’ll need Firefox 5, Safari or Chrome to see it). It doesn’t degrade well at the moment, the root cause of which is down to what I think is a bug in Firefox’s implementation — I’ll need to confirm that.
One quick learning from making this: it would be really useful to have CSS Mixins when using a lot of repetitive keyframes, as I do in this animation. The W3C seem to be quite against them, however.
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