Introduction
Overview
History
Advice
Books
Tutorials
Shapes
Summary
rect
roundrect
line
polyline
curve
arc
oval
image
shape
Special Topics
group
shapetype
positioning
animation
stylesheets
Community
Web Sites
Mailing Lists
USENET
Vendors
News
|
You've read that only the Microsoft web browser supports VML, so it may come as a surprise to learn that other companies joined with Microsoft in submitting the Vector Markup Language to the World Wide Web Consortium for
DatesTheJust prior to the submittal of the VML specification, another group of companies (Adobe, IBM, Netscape and Sun) submitted a specification for another XML-based markup language called Precision Graphics Markup Language (PGML). The Scalable Vector Graphics working group resulted from these submittal. It published the requirements for SVG in October, 1998, followed by a draft of the SVG specification in February, 1999. The VML specification is implemented starting with MSIE Version 5 and is also supported by Microsoft's Office 2000+ products. However, no revisions to the original VML specification have been released. The SVG specification has been updated and is expected to evolved into the final standard for vector graphics - to be supported by all major web browsers. As is covered elsewhere on this site, a variety of standalone applications have been released which allow the user to create vector graphics and which generate the required VML/PGML/SVG code for insertion into web pages. PlayersThe
The Vendors page at this site lists the companies who provide tools for generating and using vector graphics. There are perhaps about two dozen in total, but no one company dominates the field. Nor are any of the applications universally recognized by the majority of web designers. Vector graphics (except for Flash) simply have not become used as commonly as standard raster graphics (JPG or GIF). Until such time as web browsers universally support vector graphics, don't expect the vendor industry to take off.
|
