{"id":221,"date":"2008-11-23T10:15:27","date_gmt":"2008-11-23T10:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8000\/?p=221"},"modified":"2008-11-23T10:15:27","modified_gmt":"2008-11-23T10:15:27","slug":"svg-lives-the-internet-explorer-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/2008\/11\/svg-lives-the-internet-explorer-claim\/","title":{"rendered":"SVG Lives: the Internet Explorer Claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the next in a series of posts refuting some recurring claims about the death of SVG<\/abbr>, In the first post<\/a>, I gave a brief overview of SVG<\/abbr>. Each subsequent post takes a claim and refutes it.<\/p>\n

The Claim<\/h2>\n

SVG<\/abbr> is dead because it is not supported by Internet Explorer<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This argument is possibly the most complicated. For a long time, almost the only way to view SVG<\/abbr> in a browser was by using the ASV<\/abbr> plugin that worked best under IE<\/abbr>. Adobe has not improved this plugin in years and Microsoft has done nothing to make it easier to use. Meanwhile, the other major browsers (Firefox, Opera, and Safari, to name a few) have steadily been improving their native support for SVG<\/abbr>.<\/p>\n

At present, IE<\/abbr> seems to be the only browser without any native support for SVG<\/abbr>. Despite the fact that IE<\/abbr> is the dominant browser, it’s popularity has been falling in recent years (down to around 80% from the upper 90% range a few years ago). For some sites, the proportion of IE<\/abbr> visitors is even lower.<\/p>\n

Several companies and individual groups have been revisiting the idea of developing a new SVG<\/abbr> plugin for IE<\/abbr>. When one of these projects completes, users of IE<\/abbr> would have the same access to SVG<\/abbr> as users of other browsers.<\/p>\n

That isn’t the whole story though. SVG<\/abbr> has actually spread in places other than the web. SVG<\/abbr> has been growing in popularity among cell phone systems, especially outside the United States. SVG<\/abbr> is very popular in the cartography community. Some companies are using SVG<\/abbr> behind the scenes, because it is relatively easy to manipulate from code, and then rasterizing the results.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, lack of support in IE<\/abbr> would have meant the death of almost any web format. Now, IE<\/abbr> is not the only game on the web. More importantly, the market for SVG<\/abbr> as a vector format has spread beyond the web to phones, maps, and even operating systems (the KDE<\/abbr> window manager on Linux makes extensive use of SVG<\/abbr>.)<\/p>\n

Next time: Summary<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the next in a series of posts refuting some recurring claims about the death of SVG, In the first post, I gave a brief overview of SVG. Each subsequent post takes a claim and refutes it. The Claim SVG is dead because it is not supported by Internet Explorer This argument is possibly\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,153,315,322],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gwadej.org\/programmer-musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}