Applications of SVG?

[uranther]

SVG is nice and all, and browsers are already supporting it.
What does that mean to me, though? What am I supposed to use SVG
for? The only way I could use it for content relevance is if I drew
diagrams of what I was talking about, but I don't see to be very
common.

Should I be using SVG for layout images? Are they larger than JPGs
or the other obvious alternatives in file size? This is assuming,
of course, that I'm ignoring IE's bullshit

 

[David Dorward]

SVG is nice and all, and browsers are already supporting it.
What does that mean to me, though? What am I supposed to use SVG
for?

Vector graphics. The sort of thing Flash is good for (but with an open
standard, and non-proprietary implementations on multiple platforms).

Should I be using SVG for layout images? Are they larger than JPGs
or the other obvious alternatives in file size?

Is a JPEG larger then a GIF? Depends on what the image is of. Same applies
to $foo Vs. SVG.

 

[Jim Higson]

SVG is nice and all, and browsers are already supporting it.
What does that mean to me, though?

What am I supposed to use SVG for?

Firefox 1.5 doesn't seem ready for it, but images that take up 80% of the
screen width regardless of if the user is on a mobile or 20 inch screen is
the biggest selling point for me.

I say not ready because there doesn't seem to be any simple way to scale an
SVG image using CSS yet. Setting the size of the Object is easy, but the
image inside it just stays the same. When/if the img tag supports SVG this
should be trivial.

The only way I could use it for content relevance is if I drew
diagrams of what I was talking about, but I don't see to be very
common.

Logos are also good in SVG, since most are mostly simple shapes.

Should I be using SVG for layout images? Are they larger than JPGs
or the other obvious alternatives in file size?

Depends. For SVG, the filesize will depend on complexity of the image, but
be the same regardless of how large the image is on screen, whereas with
jpg/png/gif the filesize is related to how many pixels the image has.

Note that SVGs can be transparently served gzipped, which usually reduces
their size by about 70%. I find a gzipped SVG is about about half the size
of a realistic PNG export in most real world cases.

 

[Leif K-Brooks]

I say not ready because there doesn't seem to be any simple way to scale an
SVG image using CSS yet. Setting the size of the Object is easy, but the
image inside it just stays the same. When/if the img tag supports SVG this
should be trivial.

If you use namespaces to embed the SVG document in an XHTML document
directly, you should be able to scale it with CSS. Or you could use
<object> and apply the stylesheet to the SVG document instead of to the
HTML document it's embedded in.

 

[Jim Higson]

If you use namespaces to embed the SVG document in an XHTML document
directly, you should be able to scale it with CSS. Or you could use
<object> and apply the stylesheet to the SVG document instead of to the
HTML document it's embedded in.

This sounds cool. I've tried a few things like this and found none to
work... could you give an example?