About SVG (to use or not to use?) [closed]

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About SVG: is it old technology? I mean maybe开发者_如何学Go after year it will die (will be forgotten)? Is it good to use SVG in new startups for vector graphics? how well SVG is supported by browsers and developers? Can i find reach libraries and good books about it?

Thank you for any advice!!!

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All major browsers support SVG quite well, except IE. IE9 will bring SVG support, but not the whole spec (SMIL and filters won't be available for example). Moreover, recent JavaScript performance improvements also benefit SVG.

I don't think it will die soon. Actually, it has not been usable in web projects until now due to the lack of browser support. But as soon as IE9 is available, I predict the rise of the use of SVG. For sure it won't be dropped in the near future.

Some major companies already use it. Google Maps does, and falls back to VML (an old IE specific vector graphics language) if needed.

Canvas is its main competitor, but there is a big difference between both: Canvas is an API and SVG is a document that you can modify through the DOM.

You don't need libraries since SVG is XML. Just write it like you write HTML.

So it might fit your needs, depending on your application.

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SVG was first introduced in 2001 with SVG 1.0. It hasn't died yet.

I would suggest starting with the Wikipedia article on SVG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics

Which should answer most of your questions. I can't be more specific about whether its a good fit for your application as I have no idea what your application specifically is.

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Lack of SVG support on IE 6-7-8 can be mitigated with plug-ins like Adobe SVG Viewer, Batik (running as an applet) and SVGWeb (a Flash based plugin). The Java web framework ItsNat integrates all of them (and of course native SVG), SVG code can be added to your pages inline into HTML or pure SVG pages (using iframe/object/embed/applet into your HTML).

Take a look to examples here and here (see child nodes). Note: because a bug in Batik applet support SVG events are not working (fixed in v1.1)