Adobe^® SVG Viewer for Windows

Release Notes

Version 1.0 (Build 94)

About the SVG Viewer
System requirements
How to install the SVG Viewer
How to copy Netscape plug-ins into other Browsers
How to view SVG files in your Web browser
How to turn artwork into SVG
Tips and Hints
Known Problems
Contact Information
Copyright Notice
More Information on Adobe's support for SVG

About the SVG Viewer

The Adobe SVG Viewer supports Stylable SVG from the "last call" W3C draft specification for Scalable Vector Graphics published on 3/3/00. Please keep in mind that the specification is under development, and will continue to evolve until it is made a recommended specification sometime later in the year 2000.

How to install the SVG Viewer

Before installing, please close any application which you have used to view SVG with an old version of the viewer.
Execute the downloaded file.

How to copy Netscape plug-ins into other Browsers

If you install another copy of Netscape which is supported by the Netscape plug-in, you can copy the following files into your plug-ins folder to view SVG from within that browser:

NPSVGVw.dll
SVGView.dll
SVGViewer.zip

How to view SVG files in your Web browser

Once you install the Adobe SVG Viewer, you should be able to view any SVG file that you export from Illustrator in any supported Web browser.

How to turn artwork into SVG

You can export SVG from Illustrator 9. (To create SVG artwork with Illustrator 8.01, install the Adobe Illustrator SVG format plug-in, which works with the English version of Illustrator 8.01.) You can create your artwork in Illustrator, export it as SVG, and then add any JavaScript interactivity, animation, or filter effects by hand.

Tips and Hints

Style attributes (or style attributes that use entity references) render more quickly than embedded stylesheets.

System Requirements

Windows 95, 98, 2000, or NT 4.0
Netscape Navigator or Communicator versions 4.0 through 4.73, or Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher
13 MB of hard disk space
32 MB of RAM recommended

Known Problems with the SVG Viewer

All Browsers

The SVG Viewer currently treats glyph-orientation-vertical as if it were 0 by default, when the specified default is 'auto'. This means that in order for this property to work correctly in the future when the Viewer supports it, you'll need to include the style "glyph-orientation-vertical:0" on any vertical text.
It's possible for elements near the edge of an SVG graphic to not receive a mouseout event.
For filter effects with filterUnits="objectBoundingBox", the Viewer currently treats lengths on filter nodes as if the filterUnits were userSpaceOnUse.
SVG files won't be associated with your browser on Win/9x systems until you log in again.

Internet Explorer

You must have Internet Explorer 4 or higher installed in order to use the SVG Viewer as an ActiveX control in other applications (like Microsoft Office).
You must remove any SVG from your Active Desktop before you can install a new version of the Viewer.
Background images in the HTML page sometimes don't display correctly when underneath SVG.
If you view an SVG file in the ActiveX control you must first close Internet Explorer before you try to install an updated version of the control.
If you open more than one window containing a link to the same SVG file, and the SVG file is embedded using the HTML <embed> tag, then when you print one of the windows it may print based on changes to the DOM in the other window. This is due to limitations of Internet Explorer.
Due to Internet Explorer limitations, it's not possible to see properties of other windows from a script defined inside an SVG file.
Using the Adobe SVG Netscape plug-in under Internet Explorer on Windows is not supported.

Netscape

When you leave a Web page, Netscape can often unload the Adobe SVG Viewer plug-in before Netscape terminates all scripts running in the HTML. Therefore you should be careful when writing scripts to check to see if the plug-in is still loaded before you attempt to access the SVG DOM from setTimeout or setInterval callbacks in your HTML JavaScript.
Due to design limitations of Netscape, avoid using HTML with the following form:
```
  <a href="#" onclick="myScriptWhichModifiesSVG()">
```
The problem is that JavaScript responds to the onclick event and begins executing the script, but then Netscape also responds to the fact that you clicked on a link, and interrupts JavaScript to re-load the current page. This conflict can be avoided by re-writing the code as follows:
```
  <a href="javascript:myScriptWhichModifiesSVG()">
```
Due to Netscape script engine limitations, the svgDocument object is not defined in JavaScript functions declared within SVG <script> elements. To work around this, you can retrieve the SVG document object from from withing SVG event handlers by calling getTarget on the evt object which is passed in. For example:
```
  // Retrieve the SVG document object:
  var directTarget = evt.getTarget();
  var svgDocument;
  if( directTarget.getNodeType() != 9 )  // if not DOCUMENT_NODE
    svgDocument = directTarget.getOwnerDocument();
  else
    svgDocument = directTarget;
```
Due to a bug in Netscape, if you set your browser cache to 0 bytes, you must click shift-reload in the Netscape toolbar if you want to reload the contents of an SVG graphic that has been modified on the server.
If a JavaScript event handler contains an error, any subsequent JavaScript will fail to execute. This is due to a bug in Netscape's handling of scripts executed by plug-ins.
Due to Netscape script limitations, you can't change the URL of another frame from an SVG event handler.
Due to Netscape script engine limitations, calling the alert() function from within an SVG event handler might not work, and it might cause subsequent JavaScript to no longer execute. Similar problems occur for any Netscape modal window, including the security privileges window.
There is a bug in Netscape involving plug-ins that use JavaScript. If you load a page with a plug-in that uses JavaScript and then disable Java and quit the browser, Netscape will crash.
Netscape does not always allow you to access the document.embeds[] array from within an SVG script. To work around this, use document.mySVG, where mySVG is the name of your embed object.
If you use "Print Preview" in Netscape on a page which contains plug-ins (such as the Adobe SVG Viewer), Netscape will crash. For a similar reason Netscape will crash when you try to print a page containing plug-ins using Acrobat Distiller.
If you use Netscape 4.0x to view the same SVG file in two windows, and that file uses a global JavaScript function on the window object, sometimes JavaScript will not initialize in the second window. The work-around is to upgrade to a more recent version of Netscape.

Contact Information

To report bugs and/or provide feedback, please go to the SVG Web Center on Adobe.com.

Copyright Notice

Adobe and Illustrator are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Windows and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Mac OS and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Adobe® SVG Viewer for Windows