SVG Viewer and Browser

Currently, SVG doesn't have native browser support in any of the most popular browsers (such as Netscape, Internet Explorer or Opera), so SVG viewing is limited to plug-ins for the time being. However, both Netscape and Internet Explorer are promising future browser support for SVG, and with browser support, the plug-in will eventually be phased out.

SVG Viewer

In order to to view SVG files in your browser, you must download an SVG viewer. There are numerous SVG viewers available, but by far the most popular is the Adobe SVG viewer. The viewer is free and can be downloaded by going to the Adobe website.

An SVG Viewer includes an XML parser; a CSS parser; a CSS cascading, specificity and inheritance engine; and an SVG rendering engine to draw the graphics. It may offer print capabilities, in addition to display on screen.

SVG Browser

There are a couple of open-source browsers that offer some support for SVG.

• The SVG-enabled Mozilla has support for a lot of the SVG specification (but not all of it).

• The X-Smiles project is a Java-based effort to include native support for SVG in a browser and W3C's own Amaya, which is a browser/editor, and offers some support for SVG, although its support is by no means complete.