Some landmark news you may have missed recently is the reality that all the major web browsers now support the open standard for scalable vector graphics, SVG. SVG was of course created and standardised long ago, but it’s taken some 14 years from the initial development through to this position of receiving full support from all the big name browsers.

Resistance to the standard came from Microsoft. They attempted to have their own technology become the standard — first by submitting it as a candidate for the basis of the SVG standard and then, when the rest of the community rejected their submission, by leveraging their other software monopolies to promote their own format and by dragging their feet over supporting SVG.

But the inevitable attractor of open standards has finally had its effect, and the power of this important open standard is finally unleashed across Firefox, Chrome, IE8 and most others. SVG allows very small image downloads to deliver rich, potentially interactive graphics that work on any device at any resolution. To get a hint of the power, take a look at the web site of SVG pioneer Kelvin Lawrence.