SVG looks set to be the future of web graphics – the distant future, perhaps, as it’s not yet supported by IE without a plugin. Opera’s Chief Web Opener, David Storey, announced on his blog recently that future builds of Opera will support SVG on the CSS background-image
declaration. This is very good news, and the potential for scalable layouts is exciting.
The best tool for creating SVG files that I know of is the free, open source, Inkscape, which has just released version 0.45. Inkscape is similar to Illustrator or Freehand; it’s not as polished as these commercial releases but is still very powerful and capable of producing stunning effects. And – crucially – its native format is SVG.
There are a plenty of tutorials available on the web, and the latest Linux Format magazine has an archive of tutorials (in PDF) on the included DVD. A good opportunity to start practising your skills in preparation for its full implementation.
Gecko, Webkit and Opera-based browsers currently support SVG natively, while IE requires a plugin – no definitive news yet on whether it will be implemented at a later date, but the signs are hopeful.
Update: Just realised that Safari doesn’t support SVG as native, but it does come with an integrated Adobe plugin to view.
Renesis has just released the 0.5 version of their SVG plug-in.
I haven’t tested it. I have it linked from http://svg.startpagina.nl
stelt [February 9th, 2007, 15:03]