My philosophy is that Microsoft should focus less on “compete” and more on delighting the users. Or, as I’ve said before, “the best tech advocacy is to make tech that helps people rock.”
One important path to building tech that helps people rock is interoperability. In today’s networked, heterogeneous world, no tech is an island (my apologies to John Donne). It’s best for Microsoft – and everyone else – if the company plays well with others, adopts open standards and the open web and actively participates with standards-making bodies. I see things like The Empire’s participation at W3C’s Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee Meeting in November, Microsoft’s being a Gold Sponsor at the upcoming ConFoo conference and the work being done by the Open Source Teams in both Redmond and Toronto as signs of what I call the company’s “Sea Change”.
So it pleased me to see an Ars Technica article titled Microsoft’s Collaboration on SVG is a win for the Open Web pointing to the announcement on IEBlog that Microsoft is joining the W3C working group on Scalable Vector Graphics, a.k.a. SVG.
Patrick Dengler, Senior Program Manager for the Internet Explorer Team, writes:
We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next generation Web platform. As evidenced by our ongoing involvement in W3C working groups, we are committed to participating in the standards process to help ensure a healthy future for the Web. Our involvement with the SVG working group builds on that commitment.
To date, I have had several interactions with the SVG working group, and their clear dedication to creating a great technology for end users and developers alike stands out. I personally look forward to future and more direct involvement with this great set of folks.
It’s not a formal announcement that SVG support’s going into future versions of IE, but I certainly hope that this is the first step towards that.
4 replies on “Microsoft and the W3C SVG Working Group: A Step in the Right Direction”
Bravo! But SVG has to be the slowest-implemented technology on the web. I remember a BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group presentation on SVG a decade ago, with representatives from Adobe and MS saying it would be native in browsers RSN …
“My philosophy is that Microsoft should focus less on ‘compete’ and more on delighting the users. Or, as I’ve said before, ‘the best tech advocacy is to make tech that helps people rock.’ One important path to building tech that helps people rock is interoperability….”
Howdy Joey — Any word then on Visual Studio and stuff exporting to SWF?
jd/adobe
John Dowdell: I did say “focus less on compete”, not give it up entirely. After all, I’m trying to buy a house!
Oh, and a house does cost more than an accordion…. ;-)
jd