Sams Teach Yourself XML in 24 Hours, Third Edition

Chapter 6. Using SVG to Draw Scalable Graphics

	One picture is worth 1,000 words.
	--Unknown

Ever since the early days of the Web, HTML has supported images on web pages. However, we’ve had to limit ourselves to primitive, static bitmap files. As you may or may not know, bitmap files are somewhat inefficient because they describe images using thousands of little rectangles called pixels. Although bitmaps are necessary for photo-realistic images, a type of graphic approach known as vector graphics is actually much more efficient for many kinds of web graphics. If you’ve ever watched a Macromedia Flash animation or visited a web site built in Flash, you already have some idea of what vector graphics can do. There are a few vector graphics file formats ...