Random Fractals» SVG

From Day 1 of Flex SVG Explorer Dev and Research

Taras — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:24:47 +0000

I meant to post this yesterday, but ran out of time.

Flex SVG Explorer Preview

Here is a preview of Flex SVG Explorer I started the other day:

I’ve decided to start this personal Flex project to explore available SVG import/export options and related APIs in Flex.

The idea came to me after checking out some SVG designer tools like InkSpace, Amaya, and Sketsa and finding out that people still think SVG can’t be loaded into a Flex app and made interactive since the stock SWFLoader does not support SVG animation, scripting, or interactivity with the imported SVG image graphics.

Current and Planned Flex SVG Explorer Features

The current version doesn’t not have much to offer yet, but that depends on what you expect to see from one day of work.

I’ve layed out the main canvas with a zoom slider, added SVG text display, and created a toolbox section with SVG document tree and tabs for future property display and editing options. All in one day of work. There is no SVG file upload or url box yet, but you can preview sample graphics by selecting them from the combo box in the Toolbox.

Eventually, I’d like to fill the Toolbox with some SVG document display options, like referenced images, links, SVG element usage statistics, styles and attributes editor grids, but you should see the general direction there already. I am also planning to add SVG markup code highlighting.

Currently, I am working on getting shape selections done. Once that is in a lot of editing and painting options will be available to create new SVG graphics or edit existing ones.

Flex SVG Explorer UI Theme

I picked the Undefined Flex UI Theme from scalenine.com theme gallery, although it’s just a temporary theme before I find time to create a unique look and feel and Flex SVG logo.

Sample SVG Graphics

The sample SVG graphics are from openclipart.com.

SVG Loading API

Well, turns out you can load SVG files and make them interactive with SVG Viewer, and no, I am not talking about Adobe SVG Viewer IE plugin this time.

SVG Viewer API from com.zavoo.labs just got moved to Google code in December. This library is a jewel find that fills the existing gap of loading SVG graphics in Flex and interacting with the loaded graphics elements. Until the rumored SVG to Degrafa Converter tool and hopefully some converter API comes out, I don’t think there is a better choice for loading SVG graphics in Flex, if you are looking to do more than just display a static image.

Jamming SVG with Flex?

Now, I’d love to sign up for a conference to do a session on “Jamming SVG with Flex” and present some of my experiments with Degrafa, SVG Viewer API, SVG-based painting in Flex, along with practical data visualization components using Blank SVG maps of the world and Away3D to push an envelope on SVG usage in Flex and truly scalable GeoWeb.

Anyone interested?

My preference would be FITC conference in Chicago, but I am open to other conference suggestions and locations, if they cover the travel and stay cost.

Back to SVG and a cup of Java ME

Taras — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:32:02 +0000

Over the past two weeks I’ve been plowing through tons of SVG code, rereading the good old SVG Essentials reference book and checking out Painting the Web, a more recent title on modern web design and graphics, in preparation for some potential mobile app work with SVG, Java ME, and hopefully some Flex here and there.

Turns out SVG Tiny is the only standard that is supported by most mobile phones to do any decent UI design work for mobile devices. By now all major browsers including WebKit and the clones with their mobile versions support SVG, which is a good choice for mobile devices due to the varying screen sizes, limited bandwidth and memory.

So, I’ve decided to get back to SVG and a cup of Java ME, even though I am still planning to do some Flex dev work.

To refresh my memory on how things work in SVG and speed up UI design I’ll be using Flex with some open source SVG frameworks for prototyping since I am very comfortable in this development environment. Besides, Java ME graphics api is not much different from the core Flash graphics api and should be easy to port to.

After a brief time of setting up my new mobile Java dev. environment, checking out all the emulators, and getting some code moving things, I can tell that I have not missed much in 5 years as far as Java and SVG goes.

A few years ago, I’ve built a full-blown data visualization library in SVG for a corporate portal dashboard solution. This was done back in the days when not many folks knew about SVG, Adobe just released and still supported their IE SVG Viewer browser plugin, and Java portals, XML and XSL were the hottest technologies to use for web apps.

Many things have changed in web application development over the years. Open-source software, virtualization, cloud computing, mobile web, REST, and component-based frameworks are the new norm now.

It’s good to finally see SVG gaining momentum and becoming a standard that is supported and used in web applications and on mobile devices. I think slowly but surely SVG will replace raster images for most web graphics and mobile app UI design needs, as well as enable true scalable GeoWeb that’s beyond raster image tiles backbone.

Expect more posts on Flex, SVG, GeoWeb and mobile Java from now on.

In the meantime, here is a quick Degrafa Tetris game (with source) I hacked last weekend for fun. I came across Mozilla SVG Tetris and just could not resist the temptation. Tetris running in MS-DOS on UKNC was the first computer game I’ve played back in 1988. And yes, I know Turbo Pascal too, in case you wonder. It was the first programming language most Soviet Computer Science students mastered back then.

Look where we are now.

Some cool 3D stuff and Degrafa Maps coming soon

Taras — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:48:27 +0000

I am going to put my multimedia experiments and updates to media players and flickr mashups on hold to repackage and publish some really cool 3D stuff and interactive maps I’ve done with OpenFlux, Away3d, Tweener, and Degrafa.

Flickorama 3D Update and Camera Work

Inspired by the PlexiGlass (OpenFlux 3D) example that opened easy to use Element Flow-like capabilities to Flex applications, I created Flickorama mashup last year to explore public photos from Flickr.

You can read about it in my outdated by now Flickorama update post or see an independent Flickorama review by Eric Miraglia on his Impressive Pixel blog.

A lot has changed in Flickorama since then. The added camera work with pan, tilt and zoom features provided by the tucked in Away3D engine, along with the added keyboard navigation make it a breeze now to flip through a stack of photos. I also added new Random view layout option and integrated my Flickr Flipbook, but that deserves a separate post.

Random3DView Demo and List3D

The only reason I am rambling about those updates because while digging through openflux plexiglass trunk code I’ve tried different layouts and cameras, ended up adding a couple of my own and making some tweaks to existing cameras and layouts for improved interaction and user experience.

Now, I have not seen any updates to the openflux library recently, and I am not sure about openflux roadmap or future development work, although I really like the separation of model, view, layout and 3D perspective that this library provides.

However, if you have an application that requires similar 3D list view display, I created a Random3DView demo that demonstrates the setup behind Flickorama 3D photo viewer. You can view Random3DView source code and the resulting camera and layout work in the updated Flickorama 3D mashup.

While working on Random3DView I realized that there must be many applications that could benefit from a simple List3D view component that taps into Away3d capabilities with OpenFlux Plexiglass or some other MVC framework overlayed, yet hidden and nicely encapsulated for simple List 3D data binding and rendering.

So, I’ve decided to do some refactoring on my Random3DView code and see if I can create a reusable List3D component that will make it very easy for anyone to put together a Flex application like Flickorama, backed by the powerful Away3D engine with some Tweener animation and different layouts, in minutes. Stay tuned for updates.

Degrafa Maps and Globe

Some Degrafa world maps in various projections and mapping to 3D globe with Flex 3D are coming in the next few weeks too.

You can see some early demos of my Degrafa maps here. Some nights and weekends were spent on converting blank SVG maps of the world to make those interactive maps with selectable regions and countries in Flex. I am currently rethinking how those maps are configured and loaded.

You can see a production version of my Degrafa mapping technology used in a Beer Hunter application on destinationbeer.com.

This Flex 3D Earth demo and my poking in Away3D lately gave me some ideas on creating a rotating Degrafa Globe that I am planning to enable and get it to work with my degrafa map, zoom in, tooltips and all the 3d camera rotation and tilt effects.

So, check back for some demos and new open source List3D and Map3D components soon.

Random Fractals» SVG

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