Book Image

Mastering SVG

By : Rob Larsen
Book Image

Mastering SVG

By: Rob Larsen

Overview of this book

SVG is the most powerful image format in use on the web. In addition to producing resolution-independent images for today's multi-device world, SVG allows you to create animations and visualizations to add to your sites and applications. The simplicity of cross-platform markup, mixed with familiar modern web languages, such as CSS and JavaScript, creates a winning combination for designers and developers alike. In this book, you will learn how to author an SVG document using common SVG features, such as elements and attributes, and serve SVG on the web using simple configuration tips for common web servers. You will also use SVG elements and images in HTML documents. Further, you will use SVG images for a variety of common tasks, such as manipulating SVG elements, adding animations using CSS, mastering the basic JavaScript SVG (API) using Document Object Model (DOM) methods, and interfacing SVG with common libraries and frameworks, such as React, jQuery, and Angular. You will then build an understanding of the Snap.svg and SVG.js APIs, along with the basics of D3, and take a look at how to implement interesting visualizations using the library. By the end of the book, you will have mastered creating animations with SVG.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
PacktPub.com
Contributors
Preface
Index

SVGO


SVG Optimizer (https://github.com/svg/svgo) is a Node.js utility for optimizing SVG files. SVG files, especially those generated by editors, can have a lot of cruft associated with them. SVGO can clean up the metadata, comments, hidden elements, and so on, without changing the rendering of the SVG element itself.

To install it, assuming you have Node.js installed, run the following on the command line:

$ npm install -g svgo

Usage is as simple as this: 

svgo svgo.svg

Running that on a small file generated by Inkscape, reduces the file size by over 50 percent:

The difference is apparent if you look at the change in the svgo.svg source code, before and after optimization.

The following screenshot shows the metadata added by Inkscape during the authoring process:

This screenshot shows the cleaned-up file after optimization:

It's a great tool, with many configuration options (https://github.com/svg/svgo#usage) and integrations with other tools (https://github.com/svg/svgo#other-ways-to-use-svgo)...