Native SVG support coming to IE9

Mar19
by on March 19, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Posted In: Blog, SVG

Microsoft recently released a developer preview of what is to come in Internet Explorer 9, and I’m pleased to say that they’re (finally) starting to seriously catch up with all the other browser manufacturers when it comes to modern web standards support.

Of particular relevance to this site is that they will (finally) support SVG natively in the browser. This is a huge advance for SVG as a standard, as the lack of native IE support is one thing that has been seriously impeding its uptake. It will be a few years yet before old versions of IE become irrelevant, though, so don’t expect to see SVG all over the place any time soon.

If you’re a web developer, you might want to check out Ars Technica’s article about the release. It’s one of the better articles, as is usually the case with Ars Technica, and worth a read if it’s the kind of thing that interests you.

When you get to the SVG section in that article there’s a table showing what level of support is present in the developer preview, and what level of support they anticipate having in the final product. Unfortunately it looks like SVG filters won’t make the cut.

Inkscape provides a handy “blur” slider in the Fill and Stroke dialogue which is actually a simple front-end to SVG’s “feBlur” filter. Because of that, every Greys comic contains at least that filter. The most recent Inkscape release also adds a useful “Filters” menu, pre-populated with plenty of interesting filter chains that can be applied to any object with just a couple of clicks. Consequently we’ve been using SVG filters more and more in The Greys.

Hopefully Microsoft will at least implement feBlur, as that’s widely used in SVG files. After that… well, you won’t be able to see our SVG files in all their glory in IE for some time yet, but bravo to Microsoft for taking a step in the right direction, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed for version 10.

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Ubuntufied Flying Obect: Ahora disponible en español

Mar07
by on March 7, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Posted In: Blog, Spanish, Translations

It appears that our original “Ubuntufied Flying Object” comic has been translated into Spanish.

We’re more than happy to have our comics translated – but it’s a shame that the translator only did half a job. We make the SVG files for our comics available so that anyone can translate them properly – by replacing the text in the comic directly, rather than just adding a separate translation that then has to be read together with the original images.

So we’ve taken that translation and put the text directly into the comic – feel free to share this with your Spanish-speaking friends:

Ubuntufied Flying Object

Click here to download the SVG source for this comic

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Ubuntufied Flying Object, re-themed

Mar04
by on March 4, 2010 at 8:49 am
Posted In: Blog

Our most recent comic strip, Ubuntufied Flying Object, was also our submission to the Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase. We decided to go with a Ubuntu-themed comic, with a bonus punchline of “Linux for human sentient beings”, based on the wordmark and tagline that Ubuntu has used for the past six years.

Of course Murphy’s law has struck. After all this time using the same logo and styling, it seems that Ubuntu 10.04 will be the first release to use a new design. The “circle of friends” motif remains, so the main joke of our strip still works, but the tagline is gone – making our secondary punchline redundant.

Now I don’t know how strictly these new branding guidelines will be enforced on the CD’s content – particularly as the Free Culture Showcase deals with third-party contributions in an “Examples” folder – but we don’t want to take ourselves out of the running from the start. So we’ve produced another version of this strip, foregoing the secondary punchline, and changing the colours in the first panel to better reflect the new style.

Although we still prefer the original strip, if you really want to download the re-themed strip you can find it here.

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Denying Great TV

Dec27
by on December 27, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Posted In: Blog, Sci-fi

I watched the last episode of Defying Gravity last night. It was an excellent series – the best sci-fi I’ve seen in a long time. For a start the “sci” was largely believable, while the “fi” was a lot more than just shooting aliens with lasers.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s set in the near future, and is based within our own solar system. No warp drives. No extra-solar alien planets populated by space-faring races. No teleport devices – in fact no shore leave at all, unless you count 20 minutes or so in a refrigerated space suit on Venus. What it did have was strong characters, made all the stronger by gradually unfolding back-stories, excellent sets which looked like they could have come straight out of the NASA design book, and an ongoing plot which, though slow at times, did have the effect of drawing you in if you were prepared to stick with it.

An ongoing plot, however, pretty much guaranteed that ratings would progress mostly downwards, rather than up (it’s a disincentive for people to tune in halfway through). It didn’t start strongly enough to overcome that, so only made it as far as one series. For that reason, even though I thoroughly enjoyed it, I wouldn’t recommend anyone to watch it unless you quite like the idea of being left with only a fraction of the story completed.

Alas, it’s an all too familiar tale: Programme gets commissioned; Writers plan for a multi-season storyline; programme gets cancelled part-way through the plot, which rarely gets resolved (unless the producers manage to wrangle the money for a film or comic book out of someone). If you’ve stumbled across this page because you did watch Defying Gravity, then you might like to follow this link to find the resolution to a few of the dangling plot lines.

So farewell DG, you were too good for the TV of our time. Oh, and could you TV execs please stop commissioning series if you’re not going to show any commitment to the integrity of the story. At the very least, try to find another way to deal with this issue, other than just leaving your viewers in limbo. Again.

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Inkscape 0.47 Released

Nov25
by on November 25, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Posted In: Blog

Congratulations to the Inkscape developers on releasing version 0.47. In case you’re new at this site, Inkscape is an Open Source (and free of charge) vector graphics program, in a similar vein to Adobe Illustrator. It saves in the SVG file format – an open standard which is supported by various applications, including native support in most web browsers (except Internet Explorer).

It’s the program we use to create The Greys, and we make the original Inkscape SVG file of each of our comics available to download, usually embedding extra jokes or references as Easter Eggs. The new version adds extra features that will make it quicker and easier for us to work on The Greys, and is well worth checking out if you’re looking for a vector graphics program on a budget.

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