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Benefits of SVG

Alexi Taylor 🐶 on July 22, 2020

Background What is an SVG? Well, SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, and they are rendered in XML. This vector image format means t...
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Filip Biterski

Nice post, I like that you mentioned CSS and JS manipulations on SVG because many developers aren't aware of that.

I also think that web dev community too strongly associates SVG with images (including you), and in the process neglect how the SVG actually contains individual DOM nodes (graphic elements) that can be dynamically manipulated. With that kind of thinking, there's basically nothing (regarding the UI) one couldn't build in a modern browser using SVG. There are some web apps that do use SVG dynamically to create unique user interactions, mind mapping apps are an example of that, and I've also built one. One could even reproduce the look of HTML of any web page with SVG, though I can't see a reason to do that.

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Alexi Taylor 🐶

Thank you for pointing this out. I updated the article and added a section, "More Than an Image", to address this concern.

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

Therefore a security risk?

I also realize that there is possibility for HTML inside SVG (inside IMG tag inside Markdown)

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Alex Lohr

One thing that's missing in this list is accessibility: any SVG can have a title tag, nodes are selectable if the SVG is rendered in the DOM context and WAI ARIA annotation attributes will work in modern browsers, too.

One other thing missing here: gradients have a consistent syntax over all browsers supporting SVG. No vendor prefixes required. Only support for SVG filters is still a bit flaky.

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Alexi Taylor 🐶

Yes, a11y is important when it comes to SVG and I plan on creating another article in this SVG series to cover that.

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Jan Küster

Please add, that svg can validly contain inline JavaScript and thus implies a XSS vulnerability if you allow your users to upload svg that are then displayed to other users. All svg that can be uploaded should therefore strip the script tag.

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Alexi Taylor 🐶

Thank you for pointing this out. I added it to the "updates" section.

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Max Ong Zong Bao

Awesome post on it, I found the importance of it when I was required to create buttons for mobile apps. Which makes a lot of difference in your size using SVG as it adds up.

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Ashley Sheridan

SVGs can be great for showing complex graphics in an accessible way. I wrote about that recently showing how to create accessible graphs and charts: ashleysheridan.co.uk/blog/Accessib...

You can also do some pretty cool stuff with them. Another thing I created with SVGs was colour blindness simulation filters that can alter the colours across the content of a website: ashleysheridan.co.uk/blog/Testing+...

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Jakub Narębski

About the size of images: if the image gets more complex, then SVG might get larger in size than other formats... and you could also get problems with the rendering time. So don't use SVG for photos and similar images.

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BadCat Design

Speaking of responsive design, Inline SVG Adaptation is a nice benefit too. This post talks about logos specifically, but really any SVG might be a good candidate.
viget.com/articles/responsive-logo...

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Azi Crawford

I ❤️ SVGs

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⚫️ nothingness negates itself • Edited

include js scripts and use RequireJS/AMD in SVG and download a list of links of base64 converted mp3s to turn the SVG into an on-demand music player (winamp! web-based foobar2000? cmus?!), use the inception trick to process it at a URL without the file extension

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

As SVG would be without doubt, pixel-perfect; it is still an XML. So it can be as bloated as a text file (with unnecessary closing tag). So, possible compression, and are there compressed formats for transport?

Also, is SVG the only supported form of vector graphics on the web?

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rhymes

Being text you can send a SVG file with whatever compression algorithm you send other text based formats with. Mainly gzip or Brotli I guess. They can also be cached like other resources over HTTP

Don't know about the other question.

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Sky Lee

Nice post. Do you know any tools to convert . png or jpg to svg?

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Robert M Lugg

Generally, there aren’t any. Inkscape can display the image and then you trace it drawing vectors. That is the best way IMO. PNG and jpg typically store pixels so there is no concept of a circle, for instance.

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Alex Ágreda

Be careful though with converting .jpg or .png files to .svg, converting more complex images (like an actual picture) to .svg could result on a .svg file bigger than the original .jpg or .png file.

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Swastik Baranwal

Probably a tutorial for making SVG icons? Nice tutorial btw

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Danny Engelman

iconmeister.github.io/ makes using Icons in a W3C CustomElement/WebComponent (as IMG or inline SVG) easy

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Ashley Oliver

Implied, but could be explicitly stated - SVGs are just text, like HTML, and thus lend themselves to being programmatically created not just manipulated.

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Azi Crawford

I made the cover art for a song I released by using a python script to render svg spheres

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Ben Halpern

Really nice post

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Ivan López

Nice post!

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Ido Shamun

One thing to note is that inline svg can increase your bundle size so you have to think about lazy loading the svg. Depends on the exact use case.

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J-Ciego

Hi, nice post!, but i have a question, you can create a floor plan/map with svg and manipulate the properties like room, etc....? (If you know any example, i will apreciate)

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Alexi Taylor 🐶

I updated the article with a "More Than an Image" section with an example of how to do this.

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Hassan

absolutely svg is the nice tool for image. but you know i think svg is a little complex and I never make one of them easily. because its code is so comlicated.
anyway
thanks

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Mark Thomas

Try Boxy SVG Editor it is really easy to use. Create some basic shapes and then look at the raw output.