May 3, 2006

XUL + SVG: A quick demo

SVG icon in a XUL menu item

For a while I've been thinking about a desire to add SVG graphics to XUL Widgets. You might wonder why anyone would want to do that. My answer: SVG, like XUL, is XML markup. Verbosio will be able to edit XML. So it'll be able to edit SVG and XUL. Why not?

One drawback: the SVG is included inline in the document, not as an external file. This is somewhat unavoidable, and violates the niceties of multiple skins in a XUL package. (XUL skins can't have .xul files in them, and this has to be inline or inserted via overlay.) So I'm wondering if there's a better way to do this.

Posted by WeirdAl at May 3, 2006 1:30 PM
Comments

You might like http://steltenpower.com/xbl and http://svg.startpagina.nl

Posted by: stelt at May 3, 2006 3:53 PM

An answer other than "Why not?" is the possibility of exploring such ideas as seamlessly mixing graphics and text and images. For example, in this screenshot

http://people.csail.mit.edu/dfhuynh/research/ideas/Breaking%20Windows/Map.png

we see how a textual spreadsheet-like formula is linked to a map through a line. Maps, normally shown as dead images, now carry semantics and support computations. The distance on the map needs not be named by a variable as in conventional programming languages; it can simply be linked from the map to wherever it is used.

Posted by: David Huynh at May 3, 2006 3:56 PM

This may sound silly since I don't know XUL at all, but... XSLT?

(From Alex: Sorry, this is pretty useless for a chrome application. :-) )

Posted by: ant at May 3, 2006 4:39 PM

Well this sounds like Bug #231179 (SVG images in CSS) which realy would rock if it would be implemeneted. ;)

(From Alex: Yep, only I'm cheating by not trying to load it as an image per se.)

Posted by: Arpad Borsos at May 3, 2006 9:20 PM

I love this mixing of XML languages. My special interest is XForms: XForms+XHTML or XForms+SVG or XForms+XUL+SVG, etc. -- it's all XML, and you can do so many interesting things when mixing it.

Posted by: Allan Beaufour at May 4, 2006 3:55 AM

Clicking on svg in a menu or button doesn't fire oncommand, so it's not usable yet.

(From Alex: That's not the point. The SVG is just artwork, and if I write the bindings right, it won't matter - the oncommand will still fire.)

Posted by: Pete Kirkham at May 4, 2006 5:19 AM