Scalable Vector Graphics – its a little big thing

Among the features that now come with HTML 5 the one that I think that people are not paying proper attention to is the support for Scalable Vector Graphics. It is a most useful feature that I have come across. So what is so great about SVG? With the advent of XML the way we stored data got revolutionized. We finally found a way to store data in a way that we could read as well as could be understood our devices. Some really smart people started thinking: “What if we stored image data in XML?” And that is how SVG came into being. Now SVG is a format for storing vector drawings and these are inherently images that are 2 dimensional. That means it is only meant for animation and not meant for full fledged photography.  Still we have something.

The Textual Image

Now like XML svg files can be modified in any kind of text editor. If you open the file you can see a number of primitives that define how the image should be drawn. What I mean to point out here is that the data that is being stored here is not in terms of pixels but rather in terms of the lines and strokes of the drawing. Meaning that you can draw images textually.  This is a feature that makes it very useful for showing statistical and graphical images on the web. Of course you can conveniently use a drawing program like Inkscape to make these images.

The greatest thing about vector images is that you will face no loss in quality on zooming or resizing. Since it is stored in terms of its primitives it can also be easily animated.

Scalable – Its in the Name

The easy zoom in zoom out makes it a very handy feature for a number of applications. In fact you can already see it in action on Google maps. If you look closely enough you will also notice that the graphics in Windows 8 are also vectorized, which is part of why it consumes less resources to animate windows and resize them.

Click Here to play around with a Vectorized version of our logo.

The possibilities with SVG are unlimited and it may not be something that dishes too much eye candy but it can still be worth a million words if you want it.