BBC News - Google previews Chrome open source operating system

This is an interesting development in bringing Web 2.0 web browser software on a stage -

"Internet search giant Google has lifted the lid on its operating system, known as Chrome OS.

The free and open source system is initially aimed at low-cost netbooks and does away with many of the features of a traditional programme.

All programmes are designed to run in a web browser and all the user's data is stored on Google's servers.

Engineers from the firm said the first computers running the system would be available before the end of 2010."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8369611.stm.

Berners-Lee not happy with IE

This is an interesting article that can be found on the BCS (British Computer Society) website http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.21549.

"Internet Explorer is not up to speed with other browsers when it comes to offering support for scalable vector graphics (SVG), according to Tim Berners-Lee.

SVG is often found in online maps as it allows images to be resized or zoomed into without losing resolution.

Mr Berners-Lee, head of W3C, does not like to express preference for browsers and so did not name IE by name, reports the Associated Press.

'If you look around at browsers, you'll find that most of them support scalable vector graphics,' he told the agency.

'I'll let you figure out which one has been slow in supporting SVG.' Firefox, Safari and Google's new browser Chrome all support SVG, while Microsoft prefers a different format called Vector Markup Language - despite W3C giving SVG its support since 2001.

If IE users want to display SVG they need an Adobe plug-in, which is set to have its support ended on January 1st."

Adobe to End Support for SVG Viewer (January 1 2008)

This text is on the site of the Adobe SVG Player Download Page - 'Please note that Adobe has announced that it will discontinue support for Adobe SVG Viewer on January 1, 2008.'

Adobe to Discontinue Adobe SVG Viewer - http://www.adobe.com/svg/eol.html.

SVG expert Kurt Cagle's thoughts are mentioned in this article, where there is also discussion of this issue.

Wherefore art thou, SVG? - http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/09/wherefore_art_thou_svg.html - O'Reilly XML.com - Kurt Cagle - September 10, 2006.

I'm interested in any comments that people might have on this. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)has been extremely important in my research because of the ease with which it is possible to extract geometric information from an SVG image. This allows for manipulation of this information to enable interactive updating of diagrams, graphs etc, and the ability to calculate values such as area. Also the CAD (Computer Aided Design) like abilities that SVG gives are very important in putting across engineering information, via the browser, to those who don't have CAD software installed on their PC.

Does anyone know of a way to continue the SVG support in browsers (I'm interested in support in any browsers, and have experimented with native support in Mozilla Firefox, and heard there is support in Opera, and I'm also interested if there are any plans for supporting SVG in future versions of Internet Explorer. I'm also interested in alternative ways of providing all the functionality mentioned within browsers such as development and support of alternative standards.

Its essential that SVG or a standard with similar functionality is supported in the browser as well as in PC based tools, as SVG is key to providing browser based Web 2.0 functionality using technology approaches based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML). To do anything else goes against the reality that the browser is becoming the main application used by the majority of people, and is the primary means for communication of knowledge.

SVG.Open - http://www.svgOpen.org - SVG.Open 2007 Conference, Tokyo, Japan - September 2007.