Improve your Web pages with VML

I have already implemented VML reporting pages for a customers intranet. For the customer, a major housebuilder in the UK, we used VML to provide bar charts showing build and sales progression on new build sites across the country.

We provided colored bars according to whether the build was on schedule or delayed, giving Management real-time views of work progress.

Clicking on bars drilled through to detailed stage event dates for the plot.

All the VML data was sourced from SQLServer via XML through XMLHttp.

I think you should have stated more clearly that VML is a Microsoft technology and that it is NOT a w3c standard.

I recognize the benefit of using VML on IE based intranet but I believe builder.com should promote the use of standards.

Don't get me wrong: I always happy to learn about different technological opportunities but you should always put them in perspective.

A WaSP supporter.

It would seem this article is addressed towards readers totally unfamiliar with VML.

If so, then the article failed insofar as the user is not given enough information.

For example, the author wrote:
"In order to make VML work on your page, you must specify in your tag, and you must...."

That needs editing. I think the author means that your HTML tag must be something like this:

The reader would never get to see the VML results without doing more research.

Also, as pointed out by other respondants, an article such as this must point out that the technology works only with IE and is supported by neither Netscape nor Opera.

Why must we keep devolping new ways to do what can already be done simply? I've been creating all kinds of charts and graphs for some time now using GD libraries under perl and PHP and HTML 3.2. Don't need a specific browser (like MicroSloth), DHTML or any other fancy technologies.

This is just a new, comlicated, limited way to do something already being done everywhere and it only runs on IE? Yuck!

Why do you think we had the dot bomb crash? Because everyone can think up new things that seem cool, but are really NOT very uselfull in the end.

It's like the old Html builders guild guides said, if a graphic doesn't get the point across better than words, don't use one. Content is King!

It's like all this stuff like surfing the web on your cell phone. An extremely small percent of people need this crap. Shell it! Give people something that's usefull. If it can already be done ten different ways, don't make ten more ways. Come up with ten new things that are actually usedfull. And certainly don't make ten new technologies by companies that don't pretend to want to work with standards, as another poster here mentioned.

I agree with the point made in the previous message that SVG is a better design tool than VML because it is an international standard.

As an official W3C XML-based standard it can be seamlessly integrated with other W3C standard technologies such as SMIL (Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language) and as such is supported by multimedia players which support SMIL 2.0 such as the RealOne Player plug-in and Apple's QuickTime player/plug-in (among others).

It has also been adopted byAdobe and SVG support is part of the new PDF format.

Why anyone would want to waste their time on VML is beyond me... Many Microsoft Active-X based technologies won't even work on the Apple version of Internet Explorer let alone any other browsers or platforms.

Kind regards,

J.M. Nicholls
London