Month: August 2008

Categories
SVG

Planet SVG

I was asked for links to SVG resources, and my immediate thought was to look for a Planet SVG. Though I found a planetsvg.com, there’s no entry at the site, and I couldn’t find any elsewhere. I then decided to create a new Planet SVG, using Sam Ruby’s Venus adaption of the Planet software.

Of course, I use SVG in the background of the page, though I imagine most people would only be interested in the Atom-based syndication feed. I’ll play around with the design when I have more time, but for now, I just grabbed an old one that seemed to work.

I’ve populated the Planet with a few URLs, but I need more. Though there are quite a few people interested in SVG, I’m finding that most don’t seem to have a weblog. Or if they do, I can’t find it.

There is a weblog for the SVG Open conference next week, but the weblog doesn’t have any syndication feed I could find.

If you write about SVG, or have a weblogging category devoted to SVG, or vector graphics, or even the Canvas element, please email me your feed URL, or drop it into comments.

Categories
Graphics/CSS JavaScript SVG

Cross-browser JavaScript vector graphics library

Speaking of SVG, Lachlan Hardy pointed out the Raphaël JavaScript library to me, and I wanted to pass it along.

This library provides cross-browser dynamic vector graphics that generates VML for IE, and SVG for the rest of the world. Among the graphical elements you can create are paths, eclipses, rectangles, circles, and text, and be able to apply a number of transformations.

Included in the library web site is a playground where you can try the code out.

Categories
Stuff

Consumers new best friend: Stop the Cap!

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Stop the Cap! is a web site and weblog dedicated to the fight against broadband caps. From the Mission Statement:

We feel the current usage caps being considered by broadband providers are unreasonable, some moreso than others. Those below 10GB per month are outrageous. Others which may run above 100GB a month also represent a concern because of the future direction of the Internet. Consumers who exceed those caps may face immediate service termination or greatly overpriced “overage” charges for additional bandwidth, which we oppose. The industry’s marketing campaigns have always emphasized that among the benefits of subscribing is fast access to streaming video and audio, gaming, downloading songs and video, and other bandwidth intensive services. It should come as no surprise that customers have used their service exactly as their marketing intended.

From the Talking Points page:

Most cable systems plan to exempt customers from accessing content they own or control through their online portals. This represents an end run around Net Neutrality – a plan to allow big corporations to control the infrastructure and discriminating against the traffic they don’t own or control. Independent producers and businesses not affiliating with a cable company will have a hard time selling a business plan in a world where bandwidth caps make accessing those independent products and services prohibitively expensive.

There’s considerably more at the site. Excellent. (via DSL Reports)

Categories
JavaScript Writing

Future proofing books

The downside of the recent flurry of activity regarding JavaScript/ECMAScript is that I’m in the middle of tech editing Learning JavaScript, second edition, and not sure what to include.

On the one hand, it’s extremely important to me that the book be accurate, so my inclination is not to including anything that isn’t implemented in all four of my target test browsers (IE8, Firefox 3.x, Safari 3.x, and Opera 9.x). However, we plan on the book having a two year shelf life, and the discussion around Harmony notes implementations of ES 3.1 as early as next spring.

It used to be, at one time, companies and organizations would work with tech book companies and authors in order to ensure the accurate representation of information. What’s happened, though, is that many of the people working these issues on the committees are now writing their own books, and don’t particularly care about the accurate dissemination of information in other books. This in addition to everyone and their brother (rarely sister) having their own weblog, wiki, email list, Twitter, ad nauseum and if books like mine have inaccurate information, they can just publish The Truth in their own spaces.

So, now I’m left with a decision: don’t include anything at all on ES 3.1, and face emails and book criticisms about why I didn’t include coverage of such and such; or try to decipher what will eventually be implemented from this new effort, and run the risk of the pundits carefully pointing out everything wrong with the book, and how can O’Reilly publish a book by an author who is too stupid to know what she’s talking about.

Categories
Stuff

Four shorts make a long