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Geeky Opera blog post

eduMap widget

I am happy to announce the release of my second Opera widget: eduMap!

This 100% SVG-based widget lets you learn the location of countries, states and capitals around the world. It currently doesn’t work in Opera 9.5 for some reason (weird, since that’s where I tested it on most!), but I hope to resolve that shortly Fixed in latest versions.

Categories
Opera blog post Web development

SVG Image and Background Image Replacer

It’s here! A working version of the SVG image replacement script.

Purpose

This script substitutes specified images and background images with SVG images for web browsers that support them. This makes it perfect for anyone who would like to start using SVG for their site design, but wants to make sure it will look okay for browsers that do not yet support it.

Features

  • Future-proof – Checks for actual support, no browser sniffing
  • Unobtrusive – Only affects browsers with support, uses fallback content without support or if javascript is disabled
  • Simple to use – Just include one javascript file to your pages and use the appropriate image names
  • Small file – Only 1.8 KB!
Categories
Opera blog post Web development

Web Standards, the real Flash killer

There’s changes in the wind in the world of visual web technologies, and they show a beautiful future for what might soon (and to some degree now) be possible with the use of web standards.

Specifically, I’m talking about web alternatives to that ever popular Adobe Flash plug-in. Note that I won’t be talking about Microsoft’s Silverlight here, since it has many of the same shortcomings as Flash does.

There seem to be three major ways Flash is being used today: For online videos, as a web page interface, and for web-based games. Upcoming standards being developed and implemented for each of these uses.

Categories
Opera blog post Web development

SVG Background Replacement Script

UPDATE: I’ve managed to create a working version! See here.

I’ve written this excellent script that will replace specified background images with an SVG image, whenever support for this is detected. It will go through all CSS rules looking for “filename.svg.jpg” and replace it with “filename.svg”. This should be ideal for anyone who would prefer to use SVG backgrounds whenever possible.

There’s one problem: It doesn’t work in the one browser that supports SVG background images! :doh:

Since the script does work when detecting support for/replacing, say, PNG files, I can only assume this is an issue in Opera. I have thus reported this issue in the forums.

Hopefully this will be fixed before Opera 9.5 goes final, if not, it’s back to the drawing board to write a script that’s more forgiving!