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Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

svija.love

111–120 of 164 posts

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#111

Your site is laggy, zero accessibility, microscopic text unless your window is large enough, does not support anything you'd expect from a regular website. Just ship a PDF already. The web is not paper, don't design for it as if it as. Oh, and this little page weighs 4.5MB

So much hate. Whether or not it has legs, it's an interesting proof of concept. Reminds me of the early days of internet where people weren't afraid to explore crazy ideas.

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all programs that can create SVG content convert images into inline code, and reduct text to glyphs. This means that fonts can't be reused throughout the site, that text can't be read (either by screen readers or Google), and it can't be selected or copied. It also means that images are much larger than necessary and can't be reused (making the site more resource intensive). All of this adds up to "not being a…

> The only exceptions I know of are Illustrator and Inkscape. Aren't those the two most common vector graphics programs?

Illustrator is, but I don't think Inkscape is. I haven't been able to find any real information about Inkscape adoption rates, but I participate in several vector forums and Inkscape only ever comes up in terms of amateur illustration.

I would love to be wrong about this.

Figma and Adobe Xd are pretty popular, as is Affinity Designer. Microsoft Visio is popular in certain contexts, and InVision Studio is also popular.

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#113

I was getting really frustrated with CSS and HTML (I was originally a print designer), so built a tool for building websites using only SVG content. It's essentially a website builder that uses Adobe Illustrator for creating pages. The results so far have been really promising: - building websites is extremely rapid - very little debugging or verification is needed - it's easy to create beautiful content Techniques t…

> Techniques that were trivially easy for me 30 years ago in print are still impossible in HTML. Out of curiosity, what techniques are impossible in HTML? I ask this because I too am working on a website builder, and wonder what might be too complicated or impossible for people to implement.

Any kind of freeform curve, rotation, or continuous form across the entire page is extremely difficult, as is content that is staggered, diagonal or overlapped is difficult.

For example, https://svija.love/en/imagine would be almost impossible in HTML.

The main thing that makes HTML difficult is that everything is interlocking — you can't just drag the H1 headline down 20px and over 100px, because there's already something there, or there's nothing to hold the H1 in place.

I would love to know more about your project if you'd like to share. After today, I recommend posting to HN.

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#114

I was getting really frustrated with CSS and HTML (I was originally a print designer), so built a tool for building websites using only SVG content. It's essentially a website builder that uses Adobe Illustrator for creating pages. The results so far have been really promising: - building websites is extremely rapid - very little debugging or verification is needed - it's easy to create beautiful content Techniques t…

> Techniques that were trivially easy for me 30 years ago in print are still impossible in HTML. Out of curiosity, what techniques are impossible in HTML? I ask this because I too am working on a website builder, and wonder what might be too complicated or impossible for people to implement.

For starters:

1. Fitting text to curves.

2. Wrapping text to curves.

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#115

I was getting really frustrated with CSS and HTML (I was originally a print designer), so built a tool for building websites using only SVG content. It's essentially a website builder that uses Adobe Illustrator for creating pages. The results so far have been really promising: - building websites is extremely rapid - very little debugging or verification is needed - it's easy to create beautiful content Techniques t…

Neat idea; I'm working on a project in a similar space but taking a very different approach. One question - why AI and not Figma?

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#116
post #102

I was getting really frustrated with CSS and HTML (I was originally a print designer), so built a tool for building websites using only SVG content. It's essentially a website builder that uses Adobe Illustrator for creating pages. The results so far have been really promising: - building websites is extremely rapid - very little debugging or verification is needed - it's easy to create beautiful content Techniques t…

Can I use Affinity Designer with your tool?

Affinity Designer would be great, and we would LOVE to use it.

But, the last time I checked, it can only create SVG content with images converted into inline code, and text reduced to glyphs.

This means that fonts can't be reused throughout the site, that text can't be read (either by screen readers or Google), and it can't be selected or copied.

All of this adds up to "not being a real web page".

If I'm wrong about any of this, of if Affinity Designer has been updated to enable linked fonts and images, that would make my day.

I love Illustrator but it's certainly a bit of an albatross around my neck ;-)

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean it could work with Inkscape? Since all Adobe products are now rentware I've moved to Inkscape and Affinity Designer for SVG these days.

It could work with Inkscape. I'm trying to get some funding to hire a couple of devs, and PC support and Inkscape support are very high on the list of priorities. I have had a lot of difficulty finding out how widely Inkscape is actually used. I look in the user forums etc., but apart from hobbyists, I don't hear about people using it for business. If you have any info, links etc., I'd greatly appreciate it.

Every time you add a tool that can be used to edit SVG, you add addressable market to your product. It's not about Inkscape, it's about SVG. Letting people use the editor of their choice just makes the product more useful. Also, inkscape is free, so you don't have $600/year in subscription fees to someone else as a barrier to adoption.

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#118

I really like that this allows people to finally break free from the box design and try something new. Of course there will be challenges like accessibility along the way but those can be solved. I just happened to launch a similar product today on product hunt ( https://moos.app ) that also allows people to build pages from SVG files but I take a more hybrid approach and focus more on animation (and the render actua…

Thanks! I'll have a look at your app. It sounds promising.

I really hope we get out of the boxy design in 5 years, and I hope it'll be thanks to Svija and Moos!

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#119
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the issues you run into with SVG is performance, particularly if you need any kind of styling of the SVG. As the tool scales you have to put in some effort into optimizing the generated SVG to help. If you aren't handrolling or compiling the SVG yourself you also need to look out for whatever your tool is doing. Illustrator and Sketch in particular do some wonky nonsense with filters to support things like inn…

There's one real bug where Illustrator doesn't handle opacity masks correctly, but otherwise it's been really reliable about displaying correctly. However, in the past 10 years or so, a bunch of Photoshop functionality has been added in to Illustrator, and none of it is compatible with SVG. So, there are various and warnings and workarounds for drop shadows etc. But, Illustrator has good support for SVG effects, so d…

The discrepancies I'm talking about is not between Illustrator and your browser, but between different browsers/renderers. Filters in particular are problematic.

You have to be careful about what you mean by "SVG effects" since the spec is quite large and has many ways of doing things, and different software may not agree with how they work. I don't think any renderer passes the entire standard test suite.

Re: Show HN: A tool to build real websites built exclusively in SVG

#120
I really really really really really really really really LOVE THIS.

1 feature I love to see, if possible, is to implement either youtube videos or Gifs.

(Would be cool if there was a really basic keyframe animation tool bar, but thats a lot of work) So don't listen to me.

But overall i love this. Thank you for making this!

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