1. SVG Tutorial
2. SVG Examples
3. A Simple SVG Example
4. Displaying SVG in Web Browsers
5. SVG Icons
6. SVG Coordinate System
7. SVG svg element
8. SVG g element
9. SVG rect element
10. SVG circle element
11. SVG ellipse element
12. SVG line element
13. SVG polyline element
14. SVG polygon element
15. SVG path element
16. SVG marker element
17. SVG text element
18. SVG tspan element
19. SVG tref element
20. SVG textpath element
21. SVG switch element
22. SVG image element
23. SVG a element
24. SVG defs Elements
25. SVG symbol Element
26. SVG use Element
27. SVG and CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
28. SVG Stroke
29. SVG Fill
30. SVG Viewport and View Box
31. SVG Animation
32. SVG Scripting
33. SVG Transformation
34. SVG Gradients
35. SVG Fill Patterns
36. SVG Clip Path
37. SVG Masks
38. SVG Filters

• SVG Element Video
• Nesting SVG Elements

The root element of all SVG images is the <svg> element. Here is how it looks:

<svg  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
      xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">

</svg>

Remember the two namespace declarations, or Firefox will not render the SVG file as an image, but rather interpret it as any other XML file.

SVG Element Video

Here is a video version of this SVG element tutorial:

Nesting SVG Elements

SVG elements can be nested inside each other, like this:

<svg  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
      xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">

    <svg >
    </svg >

</svg>

Nesting SVG elements can be useful to group SVG shapes together, and position them as a collection. All shapes nested inside an svg element will be positioned (x, y) relative to the position (x, y) of its enclosing svg element. By moving the x and y coordinates of the enclosing svg element, you move all the nested shapes too.

Here is an example where two rectangles are nested inside two svg elements. Except for the colors the two rectangles have the same definitions for x, y, height, and width. The enclosing svg elements have different x-values. Since the x-position of the rectangles are interpreted relative to their enclosing svg elements x-position, the two rectangles are displayed at different x-positions.

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
  xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">

  <svg x="10">
    <rect x="10" y="10" height="100" width="100"
        style="stroke:#ff0000; fill: #0000ff"/>
  </svg>
  <svg x="200">
    <rect x="10" y="10" height="100" width="100"
        style="stroke:#009900; fill: #00cc00"/>
  </svg>

</svg>

Notice how namespace attributes are only necessary on the root svg element. All nested elements are assumed to be within the default namespace (set in the root svg element) if no namespace is set.

Here is the resulting SVG image: