Hi, SVG is being actively developed in the following browsers:
* Opera (currently the most active browser regarding SVG) * Mozilla Firefox (big improvements pending for version 3) * Safari (upcoming Safari will also support SVG natively) And there is also Batik (which can be used as a Java Applet). The only real problem is the lack of native SVG support in Internet Explorer. Yes, the Adobe plugin is still around, but it is not actively developed, no support and probably won't work in upcoming versions of operating systems. There have been rumors that Microsoft will support SVG in an upcoming IE version, but nothing concrete yet. There is Renesis as a replacement, but its young and not yet as mature as the Adobe viewer is today. But when it is mature, it will be better (faster). To your other questions: * filesize/number of elements: a few hundred thousand elements is clearly beyond the scope of SVG. In my experience SVG works fine for a few thousand elements, maybe up to 50.000 (if they are simple), but not yet beyond. The question is: do you really need that many elements? Can't you optimize? Level of detail concepts/merging elements into fewer path elements, etc. * uploading files: you can serialize an XML node and send it to the server using either postURL or XMLHttpRequest * getting external references: you can access external chunks of SVG with getURL/XMLHttpRequest as long as viewers don't properly support external references Here is some code that might help you: * http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/network_requests/index.shtml - a wrapper function around getURL/postURL/XMLHttpRequest * http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/resources/helper_functions.js - see function "SeralizeNode" for serializing an XML/SVG structure to a string for sending it to the server So in summary: besides the two problems 1: lack of SVG support in IE, and 2: size limitations, I think SVG would be a good technology for your problem. But, at least point 2 would apply to other web technologies (Flash/ Java/Ajax) as well, maybe at different thresholds. The web is not a good technology to work on huge datasets. Hope this helps, Andreas --- In svg-developers@yahoogroups.com, "thonbrocket" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm in the very early stages of developing an interactive graphical > web app, and I'm playing around with SVG as a possible platform. I've > no previous experience with SVG - hell, I'd never heard of it until a > couple of weeks ago - though I have done a little JavaScript. > > The app will be pretty simple - a glass-tile mosaic designer / editor > to run on a web page, to allow the user to design a mosaic from a > palette, send us the design for manufacture, and (on the web-site but > outside SVG) pay for it. > > The app would run pretty seemlessly right in the browser, as far as I > can see - great for keeping the customer satisfied. But there are a > few niggles I'd like to figure out before I commit: > > Saving and transmitting a file. I may be talking about big files > here - anything up to a few hundred thousand tiles / elements. I'm > working in IE6 with Adobe SVG, and the only method I can discover of > saving a file after an editing session, so that changes are > preserved, is the cumbersome "Copy_SVG" command followed by a paste > to a Windows document (big Notepad-choking files, remember). I've > roughed out a VBA macro in Word which takes care of it, but it's > still not anything I'd care to put in front of a non-technical > customer. > > There also seems to be a related difficulty in referencing external > files (I'd like to have a user-selectable range of palettes, stored > outside the main application, so I could maintain them as needed, > with different ranges and brands of tiles). The "<use xlink:href=" > constuct is apparently not implemented for external references. I'm > stuck. > > I'd also like there to be some way for a customer to input a design > from a sketch or photo, maybe from a photo-mosaic application, > something like that, but I can't seem to find a way to implement this. > > More generally, there seems to be a slight odour of decay about the > SVG world. Traffic on forums is down from 2005 levels. There are > buggy bits and non-implemented bits that don't seem to be getting > much attention. There aren't that many textbooks on SVG being > published. Adobe is shutting up its SVG shop. Am I buying a Betamax > here? > ----- To unsubscribe send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -or- visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers and click "edit my membership" ---- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/join (Yahoo! 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