xmlhack: European comics in SVG

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) has opened its SVG-powered virtual exhibition dedicated to the "Masters of European comics".

Opening today, but already announced during SVG sessions presented by W3C members at XML Europe 2002, this virtual exhibition is one of the most advanced operational SVG web sites. The site notes this pioneer aspect and the lessons learned:

The SVG format (Scalable Vector Graphics) is a graphic vector format recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In order to demonstrate its capacities, the W3C has chosen a virtual exhibition on the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Web site and had it converted in SVG. This exhibition presented all kinds of difficulties due to its rich and voluminous content as well as its sophisticated layout in terms of navigation or graphic and typographic specifications. The project shows how the SVG format can successfully fulfill these requirements. Moreover the new Web site weighs half the original html version thanks to the use of vector data.

The exhibition is designed as a single HTML page defining the global layout and SVG documents implementing all the graphics and animations. To display the exhibition, an HTML browser supporting SVG - either natively or through a plugin - is needed.

Disclaimer: the exhibition is in French only but it's theme (comics) should enable non speakers to enjoy it as a SVG demonstration.