W3C SVG Mobile Competition

openbear writes "Over at the W3C they just announced a new competition: "Design a SVG Tiny greeting card in 30k or less, and win a Nokia 3650 tri-band GSM handset. The best entries will be featured on the W3C Web site, linked to their designers' Web pages, with an interview with the winning designer. Enter as many times as you like through 3 November. The SVG Working Group will choose the winner who will be announced on 24 November. Read about Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Announced at SVG Open, the SVG Mobile Competition is the first in a series of SVG competitions.""

MegaTrends...

[jo42]

First, there was ASCII porn.

Now there will be SVG porn.

Re:MegaTrends...

[Fighter(ilikeswords)]

i can't believe that you think poeple are so narrow minded... ...ummm....well i suppose they are, but giving those poeple the idea is not realy the best way to go about things if you are against it... ...tut tut.............

SVG tiny software at tinyline.com

[Boiotos]

http://www.tinyline.com provides a viewer for Nokia series 60 MIDP, a 2D Graphics implementation for creating SVG Tiny docs and other cool stuff. The guy behind it is very fun to chat with, too. Cut and paste the link if you're interested.

Why SVG is cool.

[WasterDave]

SVG exposes it's object model to DHTML, or whatever it's called. The thing you use to Javascript annoying trails of letters that follow the mouse around etc.

It's XML, so it's easy for automated stuff to make.

It's a standard.

It's not patent encumbered.

It's a lot better than GIF for a whole bunch of things that GIF's do.

It's also one of those things that joins my list of "shit that would rule the world if only Netscape 2 had shipped with it instead of Java".

Dave

Re:Why SVG is cool.

[fault0]

> It's a standard.

A "standard" that requires most people (i.e, IE users) to download a plugin, a "standard" that almost nobody actually uses (unlike other similiar technologies like flash)

doesn't sound much of a "standard". just because the w3c endorses doesn't mean it'll become a true standard.

Re:Why SVG is cool.

[openbear]

>A "standard" that requires most people (i.e, IE users) to download a plugin, a "standard" that almost nobody actually uses

If we judged standards by what was implemented in IE then we would all be in trouble :-)

There are plenty of people doing things with SVG:

• There is a beta of Mozilla [mozilla.org] that has native support for SVG [slashdot.org].
• GNOME 2.2 can use SVG images [slashdot.org] not only for icons or desktop backgrounds, but also for the GUI widgets themselves and the graphics of the window manager
• Adobe certainly endorses it [adobe.com]

Re:Why SVG is cool.

[LionMage]

A "standard" that requires most people (i.e, IE users) to download a plugin, a "standard" that almost nobody actually uses (unlike other similiar technologies like flash)

Interesting, considering that Flash requires a plugin as well, and the plugin that gets automagically installed with IE and Netscape often isn't the latest version (requiring you to download the latest Flash plugin). Yes, Flash is cool, but it's a closed, proprietary binary format.

SVG is cool because you can freely mix SVG elements with XHTML elements in the same document, and browsers such as Mozilla (with the optional SVG support compiled in) can render such documents appropriately. Because SVG DOM works just like any other XML DOM does, you can manipulate your SVG document in interesting ways in real time using Javascript in a browser environment.

SVG renders on small footprint devices (like PDAs and cell phones, which is what this SVG contest is all about) and requires very little CPU or memory, making it an ideal cross-platform vector graphics solution. This is a real solution to a very real problem, a problem that Flash can't solve (or can't solve well). Hopefully, SVG will replace Flash as more browsers incorporate SVG.

Re:Why SVG is cool.

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>Yes, Flash is cool, but it's a closed, proprietary binary format.

The flash format is an open proprietary and binary format. http://www.openswf.org/

Re:Why SVG is cool.

[LionMage]

Thanks for the link. I guess Flash is more "open" than I thought. It's still proprietary and therefore driven by a single corporation (and therefore subject to change at that corporation's whims).

No Sir

[dodell]

Flash is an open, binary format with lots of support and libraries and Macromedia will even give you the source code for the player if you've got a good reason.

Re:No Sir

[LionMage]

I stand corrected, although please define what "a good reason" is, with regard to asking Macromedia for Flash player source?

Flash is still proprietary, regardless of how open it is or isn't, and I still think SVG is the better technology in the long run.

Re:Why SVG is cool.

[techsoldaten]

Dynamic animations and images in Flash require no expensive server thing, as the client is very scriptable on it's own. The Flash player has a complete scriptable object model and is able to load data by itself.

For instance, if you wanted to build a widget to display stock quotes, you can produce a simple Flash movie and the XML to load into it. Your server requirements are any Web server and that's it.

Or just get the phone for free anyways...

[Lally Singh]

If you're not up to spec on SVG, and have no desire to be, you could always buy it at amazon for $150 and get a 100% rebate. It worked great for me :-)

30k ?

[makapuf]

30K seems a lot for a mobile greeting card.
Given the 9.6 kbps (bits, not bytes) standard data rate (you can have more but you can rely on 9.6), that's 30s of download !

If I am right, 5k would be a more useful contest.