RE: [xml-dev] Acrobat SVG and Flash - comparisions? (was Re: [xml-dev] What are the arguments *for* XHTML 2.0?)

["Erik Beijnoff" <erik@addsystems.com>]

>So, again as a practical matter in today's environment, what can one do

>in SVG (as supported in recent >Acrobat Readers) that would offer a
"rich client" experience -- nice looking UI, client-side
>assistance/validation,
>the hokey animated effects that I personally hate but Joe Consumer
apparently 
> likes ... along with the ability to produce and consume XML content.
Now 
>for the less hopeful question: what tools exist
>that would allow non-geeks to develop such content in SVG?  (I think we
could probably agree that Flash MX >more or less defines the state of
the art?)  How about XForms?  I at least hear rumors of XForms
>implementations that will run in Flash reader (not sure of the
version).  

Well, I can only speak for myself, but I've found SVG tremendously
useful. It's Flash done right, with data feeded into it from the server
with XML, or JavaScript (my preference) if you so which. I believe the
interaction possiblities makes it an extemely useful tool that fills the
holes in HTML.

I'm working on implementing an online UML editor with resizeable boxes
and strawmen and arrows and such stuff that is a pain in the ass to
create in HTML but a breeze in SVG. And SVG integrates extemely well
with (X)HTML pages. So far everything's going as planned, and I'd never
dream of doing this in Flash, but I do have to admit that I haven't
looked at the latest version of it (MX).

To answer question #2: I'm not aware of any working tools today, except
for the SVG Export feature in Illustrator. But SVG is quite easy to
learn if you know your XHTML+CSS+DOM, it's basically jst a new set of
tags in a node tree, manipulated with the standard DOM interaction
methods. Still extremely powerful with it's gradients and filters amd
interaction possibilities.

/Erik Beijnoff, Addsystems