Thoughts on web development and technologies by Peter Gasston
2007 March Archive
SVG waiting in the wings
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, […]
Moved to my own domain
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…
New features in Gecko 1.9
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 […]
Firefox to get a speed boost
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.
More type control with CSS3 Fonts
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 […]
Dynamic Text Replacement
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 […]
Aside
It was announced on the HTML Working Group mailing list this morning that the font element will be absent from the next draft of the HTML5 specification. The inclusion of font in the spec was controversial, as many (including myself) thought it was a purely decorative element that had no place in semantic code.
Of course, browsers will still have to support the element because of the many legacy sites on the web; but as of now any software that generates mark-up should use the style attribute instead. It’s a small increment better.
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