Add-ons using the techniques described in this document are considered a legacy technology in Firefox. Don't use these techniques to develop new add-ons. Use WebExtensions instead. If you maintain an add-on which uses the techniques described here, consider migrating it to use WebExtensions.
From Firefox 53 onwards, no new legacy add-ons will be accepted on addons.mozilla.org (AMO).
From Firefox 57 onwards, WebExtensions will be the only supported extension type, and Firefox will not load other types.
Even before Firefox 57, changes coming up in the Firefox platform will break many legacy extensions. These changes include multiprocess Firefox (e10s), sandboxing, and multiple content processes. Legacy extensions that are affected by these changes should migrate to WebExtensions if they can. See the "Compatibility Milestones" document for more.
A wiki page containing resources, migration paths, office hours, and more, is available to help developers transition to the new technologies.
On this page you will find some simple, general information on SVG markup. Hopefully, enough to get you creating some SVG images. You will also find some general purpose scripting helpers, that should make scripting SVG a little easier.
SVG Template
Here is a basic markup template to start building an SVG document:
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <!-- SVG elements go here --> </svg>
Dynamic scripting helper
This little helper script can be used to simplify creation of SVG elements in script. SVG requires you to use setAttributeNS to add attributes to a newly created SVG DOM element. No properties like HTML. SVG IMAGE also requires the use of XLINK for the href attribute, which can be tricky to remember, especially when you're mixing SVG with HTML or XUL. Here is the script:
var svgns = "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg";
var xlinkns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink";
var ATTR_MAP = {
"className": "class",
"svgHref": "href"
}
var NS_MAP = {
"svgHref": xlinkns
};
function makeSVG(tag, attributes) {
var elem = document.createElementNS(svgns, tag);
for (var attribute in attributes) {
var name = (attribute in ATTR_MAP ? ATTR_MAP[attribute] : attribute);
var value = attributes[attribute];
if (attribute in NS_MAP)
elem.setAttributeNS(NS_MAP[attribute], name, value);
else
elem.setAttribute(name, value);
}
return elem;
}
Attributes are packed in a literal Object and the helper script unpacks them and adds them to the element. Here are some examples of using it:
var circle = makeSVG("circle", {id: "circle1", cx: "60", cy: "60", r: "50"});
var img = makeSVG("image", {id: "img1", x: "110", y: "110", width: "100", height: "100", svgHref: "bubbles.png"});
var text = makeSVG("text", {id: "text1", x: "60", y: "60"});
text.textContent = "Hello World";