Why You Should Use SVGs On Your Website?
Why should you be using SVGs on your website over other formats like PNG, JPG, GIF or even WEBP? Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of SVGs when using them in a website setting
Using SVG for designing is not only trending but also a smart trick. It not only beautifies the website but is also light for any website. This increases the speed of the web pages. Now the thing is that what is SVG.
SVG stands for “Scalable Vector Graphics“, a file format developed for interactive web design. It is a lightweight and fast format and it can be referenced by any web code, including CSS, HTML, JavaScript and other related languages.
The advantages of SVG is that it is a very flexible format and it is extendable to support more complex designs.
So why should you be using SVGs on your website over other formats like PNG, JPG, GIF or even WEBP? Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of SVGs when using them in a website setting:
No Resizing Issues
Using the proper size without affecting the quality and resolution of the image is a kind of mess in web designing. While using any raster image (such as a PNG, GIF or JPEG), when resized upwards beyond it’s captured size, the quality is lost. If you resize above particular limit then the image can become blurred and blocky making it unsuable unless you have access to a higher resolution version.
The SVG file format is the solution for these issues. As the SVG is a vector image, that point to its resizability. As it is a well-known fact that vector graphics comprises points, shapes, and shapes.
This feature enables them to be resized up or down without any change in the quality as there are no pixels to become distorted, therefore these images will not get affected by size change.
Animating SVGs
The most important aspect while designing the website is its interactiveness with the user. For this different methods are used and animations are one of these methods.
Getting standard images animated is not a simple task, for example with a GIF, much like a video, you need to create a frame (or image) for every single step of the animation and this can be an lengthy process.
Since inline SVG are styled using CSS, then CSS animations can be used. Different types of transitions and transformations are added to these SVGs which can add a small but interesting touch to Free SVG Icons making them more interactive without the need for multiple GIF images being combined to create even the simplest of animations.
What About Styling SVGs?
Styling SVGs is a simple and fun-to-do activity. Styling lets you unleash your imagination in SVG graphics. SVG graphics are simple to include straight in a page’s HTML using a techniques called inline SVG. One advantage of employing inline SVG is that no HTTP request is required to fetch an image file because the graphics are actually produced by the browser, this can speed up the page load times and improve the overall website experience for your users.
Changing the color of an SVG icon is also a simple process, you don’t need to try and find the original file and then mess around with a graphics program to try and change the colours.
With SVGs you can alter the colors of the file easily as SVGs can be modified with CSS for hover states and other design requirements. This can speed up your design and development process immensely and also make branding changes a breeze as you don’t have recreate your entire graphic just because a color’s been tweaked slightly,
Take Navigable DOM Into Account
DOM is the “Document Object Model” this is essentially the bare bones of the web page. The DOM is made up of various elements that are ordered in a specific way such as “document head”, “document body”, “paragraph with the document body” so that a browser can understand what the elements are and then render them out on screen for the user to view. Each of these elements can then be targeted using various scripting techniques.
Using tools such as CSS and JavaScript you can manipulate the DOM based on a set of circumstances. Maybe you allow your user to select a light or dark mode for your website, by manipulating DOM elements you can change the colors that are presented to the user on screen.
If you use traditional raster graphics such as a GIF or PNG, you’d need to create a version that works well on both the light and dark versions of the page or separate versions that the user sees based on their choice, but with SVG you can manipulate the color depending on the choice the user makes when they make it.
SVG has a separate DOM inside the browser. The browser treats SVG as a distinct document, which is subsequently inserted into the page’s regular DOM flow. This is crucial for the “view Box” feature since it allows us to create our image on a canvas of any size and display it in a browser at a different size without changing the attributes of the SVG file. We also use CSS and JavaScript to interact with SVG elements through this independent, navigable DOM.
SVGs Can Be Interactive Too
We can interact with SVG elements using JavaScript because of the navigable DOM. As with HTML and CSS, this enables us to design interactive elements using SVG.
The new Web Animations API allows for the application of animations through JavaScript, making it possible to write both straightforward and intricate interactions and animations. We can also use a variety of JavaScript libraries that were developed to expedite SVG workflows.
Multiple Browser Support
Modern web browsers currently offer excellent SVG capabilities. Older versions of Internet Explorer (which Microsoft no longer supports) and a few older Android versions are the only browsers that don’t support these graphics. Overall, these browsers are still used by a relatively small proportion of internet users, and that proportion is steadily declining.
You don’t need to be concerned about using SVG on your website, and if for some reason you do need to support legacy browsers there are techniques to serve different content to users based on their browser’s capabilities so even if you use SVGs your website will still be accessible for the majority of users.
Wrapping Up
Despite how effective they are, SVGs cannot completely replace other picture formats. Simple pictures like icons are ideal candidates for SVG execution, whereas photos that require deep color depth should still be in the JPG or PNG format.
Graphs, charts, and company logos are examples of complicated visuals that work well with SVG. Scalability and CSS styling are advantages for all of these visuals, plus the ability to add animation to elements can make them an attention grabbing choice.
Overall, the SVG format is a great option for simple yet impressive website graphics, where you need to reduce the file size without compromising the design of the website, or add some interactive elements without having to create complex GIF animation or video.
Do you use SVGs on your website? Or have you seen a site that uses them really effectively? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll be sure to check them out.
- Follow Olivia Welsh on:
