Review – SVG-Edit 2.4
The new SVG-Edit 2.4 release candidate, codenamed Arbelos, sports great improvements and brings this web app very close to standard vector graphics editing desktop software like Flash (drawing only) and looks like it will have features like path-finding and FX effects (shadows) found in more mature apps like Illustrator very soon.
This is a quick retro magnetic tape artwork I designed testing the new features. Open it with any modern browser (IE too, if you have Chrome Frame or Google Toolbar installed). Here is a screen-grab with the SVG-Edit and the artwork:
Svg Edit
Almost all features designers need to create vector artwork are there: Layers, Raster Images, Bézier Curves, Transform positioning and re-size with pointer or forms, Arrow keys nudge, Align, Grouping, Transparency… to name a few. Using Flash or SVG-Edit to produce the image above made no difference to me. There are few bugs like; you can’t see gradients when you hit Save, or you can’t start multi-select or resize objects when your pointer is outside the canvas, but this is only alpha release and all this will be fixed soon I believe. Double-clicking to reset Zoom tool to 1:1 ratio or entering curves edit mode is very intuitive. Colour pickers are working good. Maybe live preview missing when you try to fiddle your colours and transparency, but this is minor bug comparing to the great usability the SVG-Edit already achieved with this release.
SVG-Edit Team shows great commitment and I look forward for the new releases. Will be great if they consider adding simple object transitions, animation and JavaScript editor capabilities for developing custom object behavior for advanced users. I really wanted to make those tape reels rotate.
You can learn more and see release notes on the SVG-Edit developer’s YouTube Channel.
Side note: this is also a great implementation of jQuery, the revolutionary JavaScript library.
Themocracy
Hello Gjokica,
Thanks for the review! The couple issue you mention will unfortunately not be fixed in this release: the gradient issue is a Firefox one, the out-of-canvas issue will be too hard to fix in 2.4. It’s near the top for the 2.5 release though!
Anyway, glad you liked it.
Jeff
Hi Jeff,
Pleasure. Noticed the gradient is FF only, when I opened the saved file again in FF locally it was looking fine. No rush fixing all this issues, I’m sure your backlog is full with requests