Contents tagged with SVG
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80% of Windows Developers Will Not Understand XAML
With the announcement the end of last week that Microsoft is decoupling Avalon from Longhorn and will make it backward compatible with WinXP and Win2k3 Server, I’m sure there are some out there that wonder what my take on it. First off, let’s get this straight, XAML does not equal Avalon. Yes you can use XAML to wire up Avalon objects, but XAML is there to wire up .Net objects, not just Avalon .Net objects. So what is my take on the news? Happiness and concern. I’m happy about the news because I will get to share the Avalon love with users of WinXP. I’m deeply concerned, because of the whole backward compatibility scene. IMHO, most initial impressions of Avalon will be via Avalon on XP, and that concerns me. I’m sure (but I have no inside info) that there will be some things that will not work on WinXP, and the phrase, “well, that would work if you were on Longhorn” is not one that either developers or users will be happy with. Either make it 100% backward compatible, or don’t bother. A 3rd party implementing XAML on WinXP can get away with that excuse, but not Microsoft, since in the customer’s eye they own the OS, so they can change it to work with XAML. The other thing that concerns me is the marketing aspects of Longhorn. For a year now we have heard all about WinFS and Avalon, and they were the 2 primary reasons for upgrading to Longhorn. Now that those perks have been removed the “why upgrade to Longhorn?” question needs a new answer and quick.
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Xamlon Rocks!
The guys at Xamlon release a new beta of their XAML rendering engine for .Net 1.1 and it is absolutely incredible. Adam Kinney has a great clock example on his blog, and Kevin Lindsey published a knowledge base article on how to use the XamlPad application to convert Illustrator CS files (as SVG) to XAML.
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Avalon Versus SVG-RCC
Alright, I just I’ve been quite for far too long, and I feel like trying to stir up some googlejuice, and this is just the topic to do.
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Adobe Announces New Creative Suite
Adobe finally announced the release of the new Adobe Creative Suite. Like Microsoft’s Office suite, but for graphics design, it combines the previously separate products of Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and others into 2 suite levels, Standard and Professional. Hit the Adobe site to find out more. As someone who occasionally works with the folks at Adobe, all I can say right now is that you should be prepared to be impressed. As soon as I get word that I could talk about specific features I will definitely let everyone know some of the cool things I did with Illustrator.
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3rd Annual XML for Financial Services Conference
The 3rd annual XML for Financial Services conference is scheduled for Jan. 26-28, 2004, at the Flathotel in New York City. It will concentrate on maximizing interoperability, efficiency and cost savings thru integrated XML-based web services. All the presentations have not been announced yet, but I will be giving the following Post-Conference Workshop:
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Apress Introduces the Apress Forums
I just got an email from Apress announcing the launch of the “Apress Forums” which was created to help foster a community with their authors, contributors, and readers. As someone who has worked as an Apress tech reviewer, (on Kurt Cagle's SVG Programming book) they are actively trying to get me participate on the forums. Since I’m a sucker for that type of stuff, and I really enjoyed working with Apress, you should see may name there quite often (at least for a while anyway).
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INETA – PDC Birds of a Feather Session Discussion Forum
I totally missed this forum on the INETA site, but if you have suggestions for the PDC BOF sessions, you may want to stop by and make it public. Also, if you see a suggestion that you would want to go to, let them know. The BOF sessions gives us morts a chance to have a voice at the PDC.
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SharpVectors Mentioned On XML.Com
Sean Gerety let me know about this. It seems that SharpVectors was (barely) mentioned in Paul Prescod’s SVG Open key note speech “SVG: A Sure Bet”, and it was published on XML.com.
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W3C Releases Third Working Draft of SVG 1.2
There wasn’t an official announcement, but it seems that the W3C has released the third version of the 1.2 working draft. Most folks wouldn’t even notice this, but if you check out the details, they added support for Rendering Custom Content (RCC), which happens to look a lot like the stuff in my XMLDevCon presentation. What it does is allow you to create your own custom UI Widgets (like element behaviors does) or XForms element, and bind them to transformations. This way you have code reuse, but everything is rendered down to pure SVG.
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Missing the SVG Open
Unfortunately, I had to fly back home early from the West Coast to attend to a family matter. This meant I had to cancel my 2 presentations on SharpVectors at the SVG Open. Now I consider SharpVectors to be one of my most important projects, and only family could have dragged me away from doing these presentations.