Using a heavily illustrated, step-by-step style, Watt aims to ease designers into a more analytical, programming approach to graphics without losing the appeal of form and design. The change in mindset required of graphic designers in exploiting "visual components" is explained clearly and practically. While presenting real-world examples of design tasks (such as creating a logo, navigation bar, or a full web page), Watt embeds sidebars, notes, and tips to convey the strict programming portion of the process. This makes it easier for the reader to balance the formality of the SVG code with the functionality of the design.
The book assumes no prior knowledge of SVG and provides the foundational information for the reader to grasp the key concepts.
In addition, and importantly, it contains source code for all of the SVG images and animations created in the book. This educates the readers in how SVG works and lays a foundation for their own experiments.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 6 Ratings

Great technology, terrible book: lacks scripting, reference - 2001-11-12
Reviewer Rating:
I was excited to find a book about SVG finally in print: the technology will clearly revolutionize the web. Unfortunately, this book is totally inadequate for all but the simplest introduction to SVG, perhaps as a guide to editing the output of graphics packages.

The code examples will make any programmer cringe, as the same extensive property settings are declared over and over again for related objects. This produces dozens of lines of unmaintainable code where 5 lines of JavaScript would suffice. In fact, there is practically no discussion of generating SVG programmatically using Perl or Javascript. Although there is a chapter on "interactive graphics", it basically covers menus and rollover effects. If you were hoping for something on data-driven graphics, look elsewhere, because this topic is strangely absent from the book.

Worse, external CSS style sheets are only introduced in a desultory way near the end of the book, after hundreds of pages of code examples with the same inline styles declared over and over again and applied to every object individually. The code examples would be many pages shorter, and far more readable and maintainable, had CSS been introduced early and used appropriately.

Finally, there is no reference section. If you are hoping to find (for example) a list of methods and properties for each object, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! There are too many shocking omissions to list. One example is that animatable transformations such as scaling are simply not discussed. The author gives an example of a series of animated rectangles, where the sizes are altered by changing the individual width and height attributes. Worse, if you look up "scale" in the index, you'll find an example of a graphical scale (think ruler) where each of the lines is an individual object defined by hand, presumably by cutting and pasting the line of text and changing the x offset!

Unfortunately, at present there is NO adequate book on SVG for programmers. This book, however, is unsuitable even for designers (its primary audience) because it encourages excruciating coding habits and ignores the tremendous possibilities for automating repetitive design tasks.

SVG, unlike anything you have ever seen - 2001-10-28
Reviewer Rating:
Remember the first time you used "View Source" in your browser to learn from someone who knew something you did not? Because you learned well and fast, you made a living from HTML. The Web grew so explosively partly because we were all learning that way.

Now imagine the same thing happening in Web graphics. A text-based graphics format, with source open for all to learn. SVG, as an application of XML, brings the potential of data-driven graphics to the Web. The graphic is the data and the data is the graphic, cutting out all middle layers.

This is not a book about pretty pictures, although it is well illustrated. It is code-centric and by necessity focuses on SVG tags and attributes.

The author expertly leads us in easy steps. The book is surprisingly easy to read. The author often changes tempo, removing us for a moment from the code and infusing a relaxed perspective, despite his obvious enthusiasm for this technology.

The author assumes a basic understanding of XML syntax and some knowledge of applied cascading style sheets (CSS). XLink and XPointer are covered only to the extent necessary for linking in SVG, for instance. CSS, designed for XML applications as much as for HTML, is used from the very beginning, displaying once again the ability of CSS to multiply the power and flexibility of any tagging system it is joined to.

The typography of the book, and the modest but effective use of color, contributes to the clarity of the exposition. The beginner should be aware that to follow along in the book, it is necessary to download freely available graphics tools and browser plug-ins almost 7 megabytes in total.

SVG is a graphics format unlike anything you have ever seen. It has not yet taken center stage in Web development -- but it will. Will you be ready or will you be playing catch up?

An interesting blend of Graphics and Programming - 2001-11-05
Reviewer Rating:
There is one thing I love about this book is that it shows you the code step by step, and you can see the variations of the results and tune-ups one sample to another. I would still expect a little bit more in-depth discussion of SVG given the fact that the author has some programming background. One thing I really wish the book would do is to indent some XML code properly. Not all the step-by-step guides have changes highlighted that instantly makes sense. For perfections and lazy people like me, downloadable sources or a CD-ROM will make it easier to explore the samples.

absolutely fantastic book on SVG - 2003-06-20
Reviewer Rating:
The basics it has. It introduces you to the coding needed for a great start into designing SVG. A few header errors may frustrate in the beginnning, but with a little reading, they can be overcome.

Great Introduction - but not comprehensive - 2001-11-27
Reviewer Rating:
If you'd like to get a grasp of what SVG is all about and how it works and you find the SVG standard (600+ pages) to be rough going then I would highly recommend this book as a starter. It provides a good introductory overview of SVG and then systematically illustrates, using lots of basic examples, how much (but certainly not all) of it works. I'd consider this to be more of an illustrative exercise book to help someone get a running start using SVG. The book certainly isn't comprehensive, SVG is WAY too big and complicated to be completely explained and illustrated in a single volume. Nor are the examples in the book particularly long or sophisticated - however, once you learn the basics you can quickly start writing your own SVG scripts (or better comprehend existing SVG code or code generating libraries). The main problem now is that the downloadable Adobe SVG plugin (Windows/Mac)is really the only mostly complete standard SVG viewer available so it may be a while before SVG really catches on (not to leave out the Apache Batik project!).

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