{"id":285,"date":"2014-06-26T13:38:27","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T17:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.splice.com\/?p=285"},"modified":"2017-12-09T12:27:07","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T17:27:07","slug":"draw-by-numbers-with-svg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/draw-by-numbers-with-svg\/","title":{"rendered":"Draw by Numbers with SVG"},"content":{"rendered":"

Designs for UI widgets often incorporate shapes of such geometric simplicity that it seems a shame to spend\u00a0the effort, disk\u00a0space, and bandwidth of\u00a0creating, storing, and delivering bitmaps for them.<\/p>\n

Think of the dots used to indicate a reader’s\u00a0position in a sequence, or the triangle tips protruding from popovers, pointing toward their referent.<\/p>\n

\"walkthrough-svg-examples\"<\/p>\n

In these cases, I’ve taken to simply writing the graphic out as an SVG one-liner. SVG<\/a> is a format for specifying vector graphics and is technically human-readable\u2014even if the long sequences of coordinates can become fairly mind-numbing in advanced usage.<\/p>\n

Hand-writing SVG markup<\/strong><\/p>\n

In fact, on Splice, we use SVG one-liners for precisely the above examples.<\/p>\n

Here’s one of the dots:<\/p>\n

<svg class=\"dot\" width=\"8\" height=\"16\">\r\n  <circle cx=\"4\" cy=\"8\" r=\"4\" fill=\"#dddddd\" \/>\r\n<\/svg>\r\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
circle<\/code> is among the more readable svg<\/code> tags. It has a center (cx<\/code> and cy<\/code>) a radius (r<\/code>), and a color (fill<\/code>).<\/p>\n
CSS even makes a rare excursion\u00a0beyond its usual domain of content markup\u00a0into the shape world of SVG: you can override the fill color<\/a> (but not other attributes, that I can tell)\u00a0with CSS rules.<\/p>\n
.dot circle {\r\n    fill: #333333\r\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n
Drawing\u00a0SVGs programmatically<\/strong><\/p>\n
Beyond just letting us replace bitmaps with drawing commands, as a domain-specific language for geometry, SVG opens up avenues for programmatically generating more sophisticated shapes, or ones with variations or animations.<\/p>\n
For example, here are the sprites for a sprited loading spinner we have been toying with in-house:<\/p>\n
\"spinner-sprites\"<\/p>\n
The above was generated in pure JS with just a few lines of trig. Take it for a spin<\/a>.<\/p>\n
While you do, stay a while and try your hand at a few shapes. Or forget your hand and imagine yourself a turtle tracing lines in the sand.\u00a0Children of the ’80s\u00a0know what I’m talking about<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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