DonXML Blog

I just found this new Intro to SVG article by Kurt Cagle on TopXML, and had to pass it along.   It looks like it was written last year, but for anyone that needs a good intro to SVG, stop by and check it out.  And if you like what you see, go out and buy Kurt's SVG Programming book (I'm bias to this one, because I was the tech reviewer).

I got an email yesterday from the folks at Fawcette Conferneces for an Enterprise Architect Summit.  It caught my eye, and I decided to give it a look, until I saw that it was to be held in Palm Springs, CA from October 12-14.  Not all that bright considering the Microsoft PDC will be held in LA two weeks later.  Can’t see many MS’ers going to this one.  They are having a hard enough time getting folks to conferences these days, no less going up against the PDC.

For those of you that don’t subscribe to Kurt Cagle’s Metaphorical Web Blog/Articles you are missing some really good XML related stuff.  Couldn’t agree more with his take on the current direction of web services:

I haven’t seen much on this topic in the .Net world, but I thought I’d throw it out there.  A while back I finally moved from the Table camp to the CSS camp for controlling the layout of web pages.  Seems like most of the .Net world still lives in the Table camp, and it bugs me that VS.Net encourages it.  Does anyone else have a problem with this?  Create an HTML using Tables to control the layout (or pull it down from here), and then view it in the Design window.  Now do the same using Divs with CSS (or get it from here).  Looks terrible, and is impossible to edit in the design window (not that I do that, but for newbies I can see them using it).  Now look at the actual code for each example.  Isn’t the CSS version much easier to read and create?  It does a much better job separating the look and feel of the web page from the process that created it.  Plus it lets the browser decide what the natural flow for the device that the page is displayed on. 

Being a fan of the old school NYC metal scene, getting 2 new CDs from bands of the era is like having Christmas in April.  If you are into that stuff, I’d highly recommend going out and picking the following up:

I found this article by Peter Bromberg on SharpVectorGraphics open source project.  I’m glad someone other than the project team has noticed our little project.  When I proposed the project on the Svg-Developers Discussion List last year I was surprised over the number of interested people.  Since Microsoft isn’t much of a player in the SVG world, I wasn’t sure how many .Net developers would be interested.  Thanks to the hard work of folks like Niklas Gustavsson (who has written a ton of code), Rich Bullota, Kevin Lindsey, and a bunch of the usual SVG evangelists, SharpVectors has really taken off.  Although I haven’t written as much code as I hoped, I’ve kept busy spreading the word, setting up the website, and helping control the architectural direction.

Since it was requested, and it’s one of my favorite topics, I figured that I should hit this topic.  For those of you that have seen some of my posts on GDN, you may have seen this before.

Haven’t seen advertised, but thought the .Net enthusiasts might enjoy it.  Microsoft Research is working on a Web Conferencing project called ConferenceXP