Adobe Releases Vector Graphics Tool To The Open Source Community

Adobe has made its Snap.svg JavaScript library available as a free, open source project. The powerful API for Web designers and developers was created in-house to make it easier to manipulate and animate Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) content.

According to the company, the tool encourages the creation of code that is clean and easy to maintain, and is perfect for building resolution-independent vector graphics that will look great on any size screen, in any modern Web browser.

For a better looking Web

Snap.svg, released under an Apache 2 license, offers capabilities supported by the latest browsers such as masking, clipping, patterns, full gradients and groups, making it easier to create interactive Web 2.0 content.

The tool can be used to work with SVG generated by Snap, as well as tools like Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, or Sketch.

It was developed from scratch by Dmitry Baranovskiy, senior computer scientist at Adobe systems, as a replacement for Raphaël, a popular library he created in 2009 for working with SVG on browsers dating all the way back to Internet Explorer 6.

Adobe says Snap.svg takes into account the capabilities of the latest browsers and complements Adobe Edge tools and services, which include Edge Animate and Edge Code, available for free with Creative Cloud membership.

“Adobe is passionate about creativity and advancing the modern Web,” said Vincent Hardy, director of Web Platform Engineering at Adobe. “We have done extensive work on new technologies like Snap.svg that address the ever-changing needs of designers and developers so that their work can reach the largest audience across browsers.”

How well do you know your web browsers? Take our quiz!