This session was with Ronin Cremin from dotMobi.

I must admit, although having heard about SVG, I had little to zero knowledge on how it works or its uses. Going to this session really opened my eyes to the potential uses of SVG.

SVG is essentially XML that you can embed into your HTML document (providing the browser supports it). You can also use an external file, linking to it with an object element, which provides you with a optional fallback that the browser will use if it can’t display SVG. It comes in 3 flavors (Normal, Basic and Tiny). Tiny is for Mobile and is currently a cut down version of SVG, but I think the next version is going to include support for gradients, opacity and scripting.

SVG is NOT a total replacement for a graphics file. For example complicated images, photos etc, are just not good in SVG. That isn’t what it was designed for. SVG is fantastic for things like Maps, and simple images. They can scale infinitely, and provide a really good way of not having to worry about things like screen size. According to Ronin, around 50% of phones on the market today, that people actually use for browsing, include support for SVG. This is a pretty good number, and I imagine in a few years time, that number will be very close to 100%.

I think the 2 main plus points of SVG are:

• File size
• Scaling

These 2 combined make for a very useful image format for mobile.

Oh its also worth mentioning, for those that use WURLF: According to Ronin, the SVG information in WURLF is currently inaccurate, but if you have the correct information, please contribute to wurlf and help keep it accurate :)

You can find more information about SVG on the W3C and Wikipedia.