Update (February 28, 2003):
Finally - a special SVG Mozilla build that installs and runs! The lib-art version of the SVG enabled Mozilla 1.3 build installs nicely and runs correctly. What it doesn't do (despite claiming to) is run properly formed SVG graphics. Not a single test SVG could be seen by it. Several specially formatted files are mentioned in the newsgroups, but they are purposely malformed SVG's built just for SVG enabled Mozilla and are NOT proper SVG. They purposefully have several syntax errors in them. For what's it's worth, the special SVG Mozilla can see them and they do look like any other SVG.

For the moment, go with the Adobe SVG plugin (our pick is the version 2 plugin) on Internet Explorer. Opera, Netscape and Konqueror can also work in a pinch, but they have severe JS limitations that make many properly formed SVG not fully function.

Update (February 4, 2003):
The wonderful folks at Mozilla.ORG encouraged a look at the special build of Mozilla 1.3b with native SVG support. It also has native XML, XUL and XHTML support. Or at least it might. The first install was corrupt and refused to finish. The second install looked good, but the resulting program just sat there and never finished booting. The third install did exactly the same thing, as it did on several other machines. In theory this will be a major breakthrough, natural SVG support within a browser. Now if the browser would just install and actually run.

Original story (February 1, 2003):
The little graphic that could is finally starting to grow up! To see the Scalable Vector Graphic map to the left, an SVG plugin is needed. Most people find the plugin from Corel to be inferior on all counts - hard to install, didn't work well, couldn't parse many well-formed SVG, truly humongous download (over 6M). By contrast, the Adobe plugin was much smaller, installed easy, had both Internet Explorer friendly ActiveX AND .dll for Netscape and similar versions prebundled. It included several read.me files explaining how to add the plugin to other browsers. As a bonus, it also worked correctly. Get the Version 2 build, Version 3 has a tendency to crash all versions of Netscape and Opera. The people testing the animated map featured above left ALL crashed using Version 3, none crashed using Version 2. The buttons in the map only function correctly in Internet Explorer, but Netscape, Opera and Konqueror (Linux KDE) are already known to have poor SVG support.

In many respects, SVG is similar to Flash. It combines graphics and programming into a single file. Complicated animations and interactions may also use external .js files. SVG diverges at this point. In its native form, SVG is a plain text file with all the ease that implies. Decide that the color of the background is nasty, just open the file in your favorite text editor, find the line that controls that color and change it, hit save, refresh and the new color shows. When everything's perfect, run it through your favorite GZip program (do NOT zip it, use GZip), change the extension to .svgz and the new smaller file operates exactly as the larger .svg one did.

Though it's possible to include any graphic in SVG, use of rastor bitmaps should actually be avoided, the resulting files are significantly larger than 100% .jpg files. The smallest and best files can be done in many vectorcentric graphic editors. If you're just after plain static graphics or simple animations, The Gimp or OpenOffice.org's Draw or Impress are very good freeware editors. More advanced efforts (especially interactive efforts) are usually done in XML editors, exported as SVG, with handedits. Adobe, Corel and Jasc also have special graphics editors for SVG.

The major advantage of SVG is that it is open-source open standard AND that it produces very small files when done correctly. Good looking static images of a mere 4K or less are common. Because the basic underlying engine is vectors, the images size up and size down without pixelation errors (exception - importing a rastor bitmap, then exporting as SVG). The console to the right can be accessed by right clicking an SVG file when displayed in most browsers. It gives many choices, mostly self evident. In addition, holding down the ALT (or on some OS the CONTROL) key and clicking the SVG yields a pan control. Being able to quickly and easily size up or size down on the fly is an extremely nice feature of SVG. SVG is a potential competitor to the popular PDF format for forms, manuals and books.

Because SVG is an important subset of XML, it is an evolving standard that will continue to improve and offer more features with time. Current plans call for a forseeable time when the use of plugins for SVG will no longer be necessary, though no timetable is offered nor predicted. Such a breakthrough will greatly increase the use of SVG.