Day: March 1, 2013

screenshot of .svg animation at 499 x 438 pixels

Following up on a post here titled "After Animated GIFs, What?" (and see also). I got an email from pac-n-zoom which has been working on web-based animation using .svg files (vector-based, essentially an open-source version of Flash). I made a test animation and if (but only if) you are using Firefox you can see the results here.
Down-sides to this so far in comparison to GIFs: (i) not enough browsers support it, (ii) the larger the file size the bigger the CPU hit, (iii) lack of tools to make .svg files.
Up-side: (i) open source, no-plugin-required animation (although pac-n-zoom will charge to convert raster to vector once they're out of beta), (ii) animation stays crisp and detailed as scale is changed, unlike GIFs, which fuzz out on most modern browsers. (because of)

(Also, for what it's worth, the WordPress software wouldn't let me load an .svg as an image, due to "security concerns." Had to use FTP.)

Update/clarification: I posted the .svg on a separate page because I knew some browsers wouldn't read it and didn't want an ugly [X] or what have you in place of an image on the main blog page. Not being able to upload the .svg in WordPress was a separate issue. It's not that WordPress wouldn't let me post the .svg, it's that I couldn't use its built-in image uploader to put it up on the site -- I had to use FTP. Here is the .svg at 100 x 100 pixels. Am told this will work in Chrome as well as Firefox (thanks timb); I knew IE just shows the image un-animated. Not sure about Safari or other browsers.

Update 2: Viewable in Safari, per asdf (thanks)

This Tumblr collects smarmy announcements from recently-acquired startups to users about to get screwed. The collector, Phil Gyford, explains:

Usually these are "acqui-hires," acquisitions whose only purpose is to employ the start-up's staff...
Because the staff have been hired to be part of Google or Facebook or AOL, they are now part of that company's grander scheme, a scheme that rarely includes whatever website or service the start-up was originally developing.

and concludes:

...there is something fury-inducing and, I would say, morally wrong in start-ups persuading thousands of people to devote their time and energy to using a service that is summarily erased once the owners have been paid off. Yes, the owners may have worked hard, but without those users' efforts they would not have their payday. They may well have had an incredible journey but, time and again, ordinary people are being led up the garden path.

hat tip Jeff Sisson