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March 6, 2007
SVG Priorities in Firefox 3
With minimal resources available for SVG development, we need to make some tough calls regarding prioritizing development efforts in the Firefox 3 time-frame. We believe that the security issues are very important and should be addressed first before we spend any resources on other changes. Beyond security, we need to choose between polishing our currently implemented features for specification compliance and implementing new features such as SMIL declarative animation and SVG defined fonts.
We feel that shipping a high quality SVG implementation is important and will be committing our limited resources to security and correctness fixes. This means that SMIL and SVG fonts will not make Firefox 3 with the current development resources, and the earliest chance for adding them will likely be in late 2008.
We'd like to ask all of you, as individuals or an organization/corporation, who feel strongly about needing additional SVG features for Firefox 3, to please consider adding resources to the development effort. Please volunteer your time and contribute to Mozilla's SVG implementation to keep SVG moving forward!
Posted by tor at March 6, 2007 8:05 PM
Comments
I was wondering, are there any plans to make SVG a real image format in Fx3? i.e. having it work anywhere a PNG or JPEG would be allowed? The current way of doing things in object tags is pretty limiting.
Posted by: ant at March 6, 2007 9:06 PM
Not in Firefox 3, no.
Posted by: Jonathan Watt at March 6, 2007 10:25 PM
By the way, here are a few Bugs you would like to vote on/subscribe to:
231179 - SVG images in CSS backgrounds
276431 - SVG in img tags
216462 - SVG animations
119490 - SVG fonts
I'm afraid the only help I can give is testing and filing bugs. I've never done any C++ before :(
Posted by: Arpad Borsos at March 7, 2007 6:31 AM
Man, I can not believe that SVG is such a low priority. Take a look at how flash is taking over the net.
Maybe us old folk don't see it much, but take a look round myspace and it's on every page. Kids are growing up with it. They expect this kind of animated lush everywhere and don't get our old HTML net.
We need SVG. We need sexy graphics. We need animation.
Hell in HTML we can't even rotate text!!! Jesus!!! It's year 2007 folks! How can we make a cool site with all the text lined up??!?!11!one!!!!
This is what the kids think is normal: http://www.northkites.com/zms/content/index_eng.html
monk.e.boy
Posted by: monk.e.boy at March 7, 2007 11:16 AM
Does that mean, Fx3 will not support one of the SVG Profiles and not be an image format?
If mozilla put that to the mozilla2 milestone, it take a long time before Fx has a useable SVG support :-(
With this limitations SVG in Fx is only a technicality toy.
Posted by: Peter Rsikie at March 7, 2007 11:55 AM
Peter: While it's true that what Firefox supports is not any of the official profiles of SVG, as SMIL and SVG fonts are part of even SVG Tiny, we have seen a large number of SVG applications that work with the functionality we provide.
Posted by: tor at March 7, 2007 1:26 PM
I think it's a real shame that PNG won't be recognised as an image format; Opera have already announced that it will be in the next version of their browser, and from what I understand Safari are going big on SVG for their next release.
Posted by: Peter Gasston at March 7, 2007 5:18 PM
Whoops! Hopefully you understood that I meant SVG, not PNG!
Posted by: Peter Gasston at March 7, 2007 7:29 PM
monk.e.boy: you don't need to tell us. You need to tell the mozcorp.
Posted by: Jonathan Watt at March 7, 2007 8:19 PM
Guys, reality check: is IE going to support SVG soon?
AFAICT, no.
Then the decision of MoCo is not stupid, going with the resource they have - of course I'm like you wanting to have a libre format for animation and stuff... but it won't happen until M$ wants to go after Adobe and decide to implement it.
MoCo is just being pragmatic...
Posted by: franCk at March 8, 2007 4:11 AM
jwatt, I'm not sure how to tell MozCo, suggestions?
franCk: I've been a firm believer that having full implementations in the browser space will actually HELP CONVINCE Microsoft - maybe I'm just being naive. Anyway, my "free time" to contribute to Mozilla SVG project has dried up recently (hopefully I'll get another opportunity to contribute before Fx3 is frozen).
Posted by: Jeff Schiller at March 9, 2007 2:20 PM
franCk: To clarify, all Mozilla SVG implementation development is happening outside of the Mozilla Corporation/Foundation - they have no resources committed to svg proper, though we do benefit from general gecko infrastructure improvements and security testing.
Posted by: tor at March 9, 2007 3:58 PM
I'd echo the call for more financial resources being applied to SVG. Given the increasingly contentious issues of Apple's position on Canvas, there is a very real possibility that Mozilla may find itself in a position where either it will be spending money for IP licensing rights or will be spending money for beefing up their SVG implementation, or will not have any graphics support at all (which I think will prove catastrophic for the browser's long term viability).
A word of caution as well - the tech job market, as you likely well know - has become extraordinarily tight. That means that developers that had free time on their hands a few years ago are now likely dealing with multiple clients or are otherwise snapped up. Unless you're willing to make some hard choices concerning hiring people (through MozCorp) to at a minimum shephard the process SVG is going to continue to remain incomplete.
Posted by: Kurt Cagle at March 16, 2007 5:14 PM
Perhaps the Google Summer of Code might be able to provide some resources to help with SVG in Mozilla. Adding SVG Font and SVG Animation support would certainly be worthwhile, bringing it to the same level as the mobile implementations from Ikivo and Bitflash, and the desktop implementations from Opera and (recently) Batik, which just added animation support.
Posted by: Chris Lilley at March 20, 2007 9:03 PM
tor, it would help if we had some clear idea of when the "cutoff" point is - I know Fx3 is going to be released some time this year (3rd quarter?) so before when might someone who wants to contribute (even in their spare time) need to do so ?
Posted by: Jeff Schiller at March 21, 2007 4:35 PM
Um, am I the only one that *wants* completeness and correctness? Is it so bad to have a reliable subset of SVG that works right every time? The only features I think would be immediately useful are
231179 - SVG images in CSS backgrounds
276431 - SVG in img tags
Also working SVG foreign object.
They would be awesome for Fx3, if they could be done in time.
Animations and fonts can wait, IMHO, and we can keep using Flash or Canvas because they are not going away. Also, the company behind the most popular browser on Windows is putting its money on XAML. Thus SVG a niche at best unless there are differentiating features and the only ones I can really think of is SVG-as-image and working foreignObject.
Looking forward to Gecko2
Posted by: J. McNair at March 23, 2007 5:36 PM
Chris: I've proposed a couple summer of code projects for SVG - one for SMIL, one for SVG fonts. SMIL as a whole is too large for a summer of code project, but someone familiar with the Mozilla codebase could advance things considerably. SVG fonts seems like an achievable project once cairo adds their user font API.
Jeff: Scheduling of Firefox 3 is still pretty vague. If we assume a release sometime in November like the last couple years, which still seems to be a possibility, the tree would likely start to be locked down sometime in June/July.
J. McNair: The good news is that foreignObject is in, turned on, and under active development. The bad news is that while a few people have vague ideas about how SVG can be used in image contexts, nobody has this scheduled to do before Firefox 3. Hmmm, maybe I should suggest another SoC project?
Posted by: tor at March 23, 2007 10:52 PM
Great news on foreignObject!
Yes! SVG as image could be a great SoC project, assuming it isn't too unwieldy. Not to sound contradictory, but I say as long as the user aspect is consistent, and Gecko can handle it, the implementation can grow as needed.
Of course, Gecko would likely have to restrict SVG-as-IMG to a "reliable subset of SVG" (no forms, no animation and no script) to prevent exploits. Backgrounds and images are meant to be non-interactive, and this would be enough for a "1.0" implementation.
Any non-conforming SVG would be a blank image with a message appended to the alt text.
Posted by: at March 25, 2007 7:48 PM
Great news on foreignObject!
Yes! SVG as image could be a great SoC project, assuming it isn't too unwieldy. Not to sound contradictory, but I say as long as the user aspect is consistent, and Gecko can handle it, the implementation can grow as needed.
Of course, Gecko would likely have to restrict SVG-as-IMG to a "reliable subset of SVG" (no forms, no animation and no script) to prevent exploits. Backgrounds and images are meant to be non-interactive, and this would be enough for a "1.0" implementation.
Any non-conforming SVG would be a blank image with a message appended to the alt text.
(sorry for double posting)
Posted by: J. McNair at March 25, 2007 7:49 PM
Native SVG support was the reason I moved from IE to Mozilla. Animation support is the reason I have to move from Mozilla to Opera.
If I had time, I would help, but I'm already spending double days in front of my PC.
Why is SVG development hampered by resources while MozCorp is sitting with 70 million pounds in th bank? That is what I read in a report a couple of months ago. Kinda missing the point of donations, ain't it!
Posted by: Jacobus at March 28, 2007 3:03 PM
J. McNair: That's interesting, because those are features I'm not interested in at all. I need animation and SVG fonts much more. Of course, I need performance (speed and stability) the most, so I think it was a pragmatic choice given the low resources available to the MozSVG team.
Posted by: Schepers at April 5, 2007 6:49 PM
SVG support needs to include filters, such as blurred svg components.
Posted by: at April 18, 2007 4:44 AM
After 4 years, I've finally lost hope that SVG will amount to anything. Even my tests in FF3, improved as they are, are still prohibitively slow. This discussion only makes me more pessimistic.
Posted by: Jean at April 25, 2007 4:30 PM
SVG already amounts to a great deal. The Firefox browser is just one place where SVG is used - there are many. Also, if performance is a problem, have a look at the SVG you are using. There are usually very effective ways and very bad ways of displaying or animating SVG. One thing I found for example is that using coordinate systems in integer values, rather than floats, makes most viewers work better for some reason or the other. Also, simplify your SVG. You can usually make your SVG paths much smaller without losing any visual appeal in the graphics.
Posted by: Jacobus at May 2, 2007 6:23 AM
I'll add my voice to those hoping that SVG gets increased focus at Mozilla; the web moves slowly but resolution independence is approaching, and we need to be starting the groundwork now, esp. in light of the position of Flash, and Microsoft's Xaml/Silverlight.
While I'd love to see full SMIL animation (still waiting!?), I agree that the basics I'd like to see are:
231179 - SVG images in CSS backgrounds
276431 - SVG in img tags
Though I'd switch the order re priority.
It is very disappointing to hear that SVG will remain basically unusable unto '09, which really does strain belief that SVG will become widely used on the web, which is really sad, we have PNG but really need the open vector format gaining traction.
IHMO Firefox should rightly be a key supporter, esp, given Firefox's Linux userbase, and the increasing use of SVG in that community alone.
Posted by: marc nothrop at May 7, 2007 4:28 PM
In fairness if you want completeness, you can use Batik and that works cross-browser, cross-platform today.
If you're looking for native SVG and speed, then it's Opera and Firefox and Konqueror and hopefully soon Safari. But let's not try to pin the blame for SVG adoption on a single browser... After all, Opera's native implementation is the best one out there, but it hardly allows you to mass-deploy SVG content (and neither would Mozilla).
The fact that IE is not yet supporting SVG is the real problem for SVG on the web. Even if Opera and Mozilla and Safari had 100% complete implementations, you'd still be hampered with 80+ percent of the browser market. So we should be hammering on Microsoft to get their act together in IE.Next. Without the leading browser implementation behind SVG, Mozilla does not feel there is a huge incentive to fund SVG project (they're just hedging their bets against Flash and Silverlight).
The bottom line: Firefox has a very usable subset of SVG that is showing a decent improvement from Firefox 2.0 to 3.0 (compare this to the improvement from 1.5 to 2.0 at http://www.codedread.com/svg-support.php). As always, companies that wish to use SVG can always try to help contribute to the Mozilla SVG project.
Posted by: Jeff Schiller at May 11, 2007 2:22 PM
IE support is of course the bigger issue, but the community has more chance of influencing Mozilla on this issue than Microsoft, at least in the short term!
IMHO Mozilla is best positioned to foster in-line SVG online; given their stated aims to "protect the open web", one might say that Mozilla caries the 'moral responsibility' to be the standards bearer.
XUL isn't being actively pushed for 'RIA' development, Canvas is interesting as are the coming OpenGL-ES bindings, but neither invalidate the need for usable SVG support (at least 231179: SVG in CSS backgrounds, 276431: SVG in img), sooner rather than later.
To over-simplify the argument, the use of web/open standards (e.g. CSS, JS, PNG) increased as Mozilla, Opera and then Safari/WebKit improved their compatibility and compliance. Eventually Microsoft was pressured into improving their support.
Image formats (esp. vectors) are the next step in web/open standards, so the same processes should apply; SVG/SMIL are the relevant published standards, and increasing competitive pressure between the 'open standard' browsers could contribute significantly to growing use of the standards.
...you can bet the growing Inkscape/SVG design community would jump to the use of enhanced versions of their sites with 'browser-based replacing' JPG/PNGs with SVGs for higher resolution experiences.
SVG is increasingly becoming a reliable vector interchange format. It has the potential to become 'the OpenDocument of graphics', and growing web use would increase the value of the format to the design/development community.
Such use would increase pressure on WebKit to bring it's SVG support up to par, and may have some influence on HTML5, given the time frames involved.
...admittedly a simple notion, but borne out in the previous round of web standards adoption, insofar as it has progressed. Sorry for the long post.
Posted by: marc nothrop at May 13, 2007 10:00 AM
It's interesting - I recently deployed some SVG stuff on our intranet (graphs out of the MIS), and did warn the team that this was likely to work "Firefox only".
Our CFO reported that "it just worked in Internet Explorer" for him - I assume that he's installed a plugin, but he has no particular recollection of this, and from his POV "it just worked."
For me the biggest issue is rotations, things like labelling vertical lines effectively.
Going forward, native support for animation would be useful, particularly in customer-facing stuff.
Posted by: Mark Harrison at August 19, 2007 5:13 PM
Know why SVG is being so slow? because there's no major application on the internet that uses it.
Of course we can't today make an application that relies on it, but we can make an application with an enhanced SVG version to show the power of SVG
Posted by: Jack McSlay at September 11, 2007 2:28 PM
Adobe will stop itīs SVG Plugin and support at the end of this year (2007). So it is important to get a new one.
Adobe and Microsoft, like Corel will only support the FLASH-format.
The SVG may be the only free vector format in the web.
Posted by: Thomas at October 15, 2007 3:14 AM
With Safari 3.0 beta, I was able to load a JavaScript animated SVG image and it appears to run 25 - 50 X faster than FireFox does. FireFox seems to render a little bit faster on an old 1.x GHz single CPU Windows XP box than on a dual core Intel MBP, but not much.
Why is SVG *so* much faster in Safari (or SO much slower in FireFox)? This is amazing technology, and it is very empowering, but the severe performance discrepency and lack of reasonable standardization is a setback.
Posted by: Paul at October 27, 2007 4:39 AM
I would like to use svg's in all areas images can currently be used in firefox, too. I use svg's for most of our organization's graphics, as they can resized much more easily for signs, banners, etc.. Maybe I can help out with developing.
What programming language do I need to learn, how long does it take to learn, and what are the best sources for learning it?
Feel free to contact me via my personal email or my other one on the website.
~adamvan2000
Posted by: Darren Crook at November 12, 2007 5:32 AM
Nice
Posted by: at November 28, 2007 10:13 PM
Nice
Posted by: at November 29, 2007 2:46 AM
Nice