Programming Firefox

Chapter 8. Graphics

Not all Firefox innovations involve the XUL descriptor format we covered in previous chapters.

Firefox’s capability to render documents in XHTML that include both conventional HTML as well as other standardized XML dialects makes possible a new generation of features that focus on user interaction. One such dialect that focuses on graphics enhancement involves the use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Although numerous implementations of SVG plug-ins are available, plug-ins can rarely interact with a web document that consists mainly of traditional HTML elements.

This chapter discusses an XHTML document that combines HTML with graphics technologies designed for very different models of data flow and interaction.

We’ll discuss the use of SVG in the context of a data transformation technique that adds graphics content to a data display without using proprietary authoring tools. I’ll also cover the HTML canvas object and describe it in terms of its capacity to add richness to the interactive experience. This chapter will use a suggested project that involves rendering tabular data into several types of data graphs to enhance interpretation of (and add interest to) what would otherwise be an ordinary data table.

This chapter’s topics include:

• A review of XHTML and namespaces

• An overview of SVG

• A discussion of the role of XSL Transformations (XSLT) to build SVG data

• The addition of Document Object Model (DOM) event processing to communicate between SVG and HTML document ...