Programmer Musings

SVG Lives: A Follow-up

At the end of 2008, I did a series of posts arguing that SVG still lives despite predictions of it's downfall. I had been hearing these dire predictions for years, and wanted to provide a decent rebuttal: Reports of SVG's death exaggerated.

Last year, I had the good fortune to go to SVG Open 2009. Despite following SVG for years and working with it where ever I could, I was still astounded at the creativity and power of the technology shown by many of the experts that were at the conference.

This year I had the opportunity to present at YAPC::NA on the topic Data Visualization with Perl and SVG. I expected a handful of attendees, and was surprised to be presenting to a packed room containing over 50 people. Apparently, there is quite a bit of interest in SVG.

There have also been a couple of changes in the world of SVG lately that should finally lay to rest the claims of SVG's demise.

* HTML 5 will include SVG support in-line with the HTML.
* IE 9 will finally begin supporting SVG natively.

As with many technologies, it looks like SVG has survived its first ten years and is about ready to break out into the mainstream.