Appendix A. Online SVG and XML Resources

CONTENTS

In this appendix:

•  SVG at the W3C
•  SVG Viewers
•  SVG Tools
•  SVG Tutorials and Demos
•  SVG References
•  Server-Side SVG
•  XML Resources

SVG at the W3C

For all W3C URLs listed here, a URL is automatically updated, wherever possible, to allow you to see the latest version of a specification. If you are interested in closely following developments at the W3C, you can frequently visit http://www.w3.org/tr/ to see recently announced drafts or final specifications.

Style activity

SVG draws heavily on Cascading Style Sheets Level 2, CSS2. The CSS2 specification is at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2.

SVG specifications: http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/

The SVG specification is, at the time this book was written, a Proposed Recommendation at the W3C. The URL in this section points to the most up-to-date version at any time.

SMIL Animation: http://www.w3.org/TR/smil-animation

At the time this book was written, SMIL Animation is a W3C Proposed Recommendation.

SMIL 2.0: http://www.w3.org/TR/smil20

SMIL 2.0, the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, has substantially extended the capabilities of SMIL 1.0 (see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil). In common with some other parts of the XML family, SMIL is being modularized to permit its use with other XML-based applications, such as SVG and XHTML.

XML Linking Language (XLink): http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink

XLink is a full W3C Recommendation.

SVG Viewers

X-Smiles Viewer

Further information is available at http://www.x-smiles.org/.

You can download the X-Smiles viewer from http://www.x-smiles.org/download.html.

Adobe SVG Viewer

You can download this product from http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/main.html.

SVG Tools

Jasc WebDraw: http://www.jasc.com/webdraw.asp?

WebDraw was described in Chapter 1. It provides close to round-trip management of SVG, allowing the creation of graphics visually but also allowing the tweaking of the SVG source code by hand.

Adobe Illustrator: http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/main.html

Illustrator 9 has useful SVG functionality.

Mayura Draw: http://www.mayura.com/

Mayura Draw is a limited SVG drawing tool.

Corel Draw 10: http://www.corel.com

Corel Draw 10 is a surprisingly useful SVG drawing, and potential Web page authoring, tool.

SVG Tutorials and Demos

As with all rapidly developing technologies, a choice of tutorial and demonstration sites must be a personal one. The sites listed in this section provide a range of perspectives. If you take time to browse the sites, and take a look at the source code on each one, you simply have to be learning more about SVG as you go.

Adobe.com: http://www.adobe.com/svg/

Adobe has an excellent SVG-oriented section on its Web site. From there, you can download the Adobe SVG Viewer, view some useful SVG tutorials, and examine some attractive samples of SVG.

Specifically, Adobe provides some basic online tutorials at http://www.adobe.com/svg/tutorial/intro.html, and some demo SVG images are at http://www.adobe.com/svg/demos/main.html.

SVGSpider.com: http://www.svgspider.com/default.svg

This is one of my own Web sites and was, I believe, the world's first "all SVG" Web site. Its purpose was and is to act as "proof of concept" about what is possible with SVG as a Web authoring tool.

Burning Pixel: http://www.burningpixel.com/svg/

Ron Lussier's Web site has a number of useful SVG demos, including a demo SVG Web site, which happens to be, in the prototype version, embedded within HTML pages.

KevlinDev.com: http://www.kevlindev.com

Kevin Lindsey's site has some nice SVG demos using declarative SVG. He also provides a number of demo images that achieve animation or interactivity through using JavaScript with SVG.

PinkJuice.com: http://www.pinkjuice.com/SVG/

At Tobias Reif's site, you can get some good SVG demos. Some of them look unimpressive in the small GIF version on the front page, but have hidden depths when you open the full SVG version.

Amino's SVG Laboratory: http://www.greenthing.net/svg/index.html

Laura Brown's site has a number of SVG demos and links to other SVG sites.

Battle Bots: http://www.battlebots.com/svg_info.asp

This interesting demonstration site uses SVG graphics with robotic battle bots. It also has some sophisticated use of SVG. However, be aware that some download times are significant.

Skeeter-s.com: http://skeeter-s.com/svg

The SVG section at Steve Bowen's Web site is devoted to the early exploration of SVG in the Mozilla browser. Use Netscape 6 rather than Internet Explorer at this site, and visit the Mozilla SVG project at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/.

SVG References

Zvon.org: http://www.zvon.org/index.php?nav_id=zvonindex

Zvon has a number of useful references online for SVG and other XML technologies. It has an SVG element reference, with two versions: one in HTML and one in SVG. To view the latter, you obviously need an SVG viewer, such as those listed in Chapter 1, "The Basic SVG Tool Set."

Server-Side SVG

A number of tools are available to create SVG on the server dynamically. They focus mostly on charting or diagrams.

SVGObjects.com: http://www.svgobjects.com

This site produces SVG using the Apple WebObjects server-side technology.

Corda's PopChart Image Server: http://www.corda.com

The PopChart Image Server, in its Professional version, is capable of generating SVG charts. This professional tool is for sizeable Web sites.

XML Resources

A vast number of XML resources are on the Web. In this appendix, I can give only a few that are either generally useful or that link to other useful sites.

World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org

The place for definitive information on XML can be intimidating and overwhelming. If you are a newcomer to XML, visit this place from time to time, but not to find introductory tutorials.

From the top of the URL, you can link to Technical Reports, which is where you can access up-to-date drafts of a whole raft of XML technologies. Also linkable from the home page is a page describing W3C "Activities," which gives a perspective on the thinking behind much of the current and likely future W3C activity.

XML Tools: http://www.xmlsoftware.com

XMLSoftware.com is a useful general XML tool site.

XML.com: http://www.xml.com

This site a good source of general information on XML. It has a small, if infrequently updated, section devoted to SVG news.

XMLHack.com: http://www.xmlhack.com

This good source of news about general XML topics has a searchable archive, and you can browse its material by topic of interest. Browse the SVG section for recent significant events.

Zvon.org: http://www.zvon.org/index.php?nav_id=zvonindex

Zvon provides several online XML references and tutorials. The URL points to the Site Index, where the available tutorials and reference material are listed.

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