Monday, August 05, 2002

SVG Snippet: Animating and looping a shape's stroke-opacity. ... <g transform="skewX(-20)"> <rect x="300" y="400" width="100" height="200" style="fill:none; stroke:red; stroke-width:2"> <animate id="fadeOutAgain" attributeName="stroke-opacity" attribute-type="CSS" values="1; 0; 1" begin="0s" repeatCount="indefinite" dur="1s"/> </rect> </g> ... This took me a while to figure out. I tried linking a couple "animate" elements together, but it didn't work. I eventually came across this PDF that showed me that I could use the "values" attribute inside the "animate" element. 4:42:47 PM    comment []

Cocoon: Building XML Applications (A mini-review) I got my copy of the first Cocoon Book finally. It's looking good, and it's nice to have a hardcopy version of this book. I'd like to have a larger review up by the end of the week, but it's finals week for summer semester, so I will probably be too busy studying. This book is the first out of the gates, filling a large hole with respect to the documentation of the Cocoon project. The book starts out at a very leisurely pace. The first chapter explains the problems that the authors were trying to solve with Cocoon, and their reasoning behind it. The second chapter gives some background into the technologies behind Cocoon: XML, XSL, Java, and so on. Finally, in the third chapter, the book gets us started doing things with Cocoon. Although the book starts out at ground zero for obvious reasons (Cocoon is complicated), it ramps up at a decent pace and gets into advanced topics such as the creation of components roughly halfway through the book. All in all, the book is very good for a wide range of users, beginner to advanced. However, it is apparent that this is the first edition. Check out the messed up formatting in the code on page 155. Ooops :) Aside from that, and a few questionable places where acronyms weren't capitalized, the book seems pretty good for a first edition. Hopefully this book won't be too outdated in a year. 2:33:46 PM    comment []