Scalable Vector Graphics
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a computer language to describe two dimensional images. It's based on XML and created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The language describes pictures by their elements. So you can zoom in and it stays clear without big pixels.
History
The W3C published SVG in September 2001. Most browsers can show these graphics but Internet Explorer cannot. It needs a plugin to show them.
The normal Filename extension is .svg and the MIME-Type is image/svg+xml.
Structure
SVG uses Extensible Markup Language (XML). So it has a definition of the document type.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:ev="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events"
version="1.1" baseProfile="full"
width="800mm" height="600mm">
<!-- content of the file -->
</svg>
Difference between bitmap and vector images
This image shows the difference between bitmap and vector images. The vector image can be scaled forever, while the bitmap can't.
Other Websites
- VectorMagic Online raster to SVG converter