In recent yeras

as a novel way of exchanging and gleaning information

the Web browser has become more and more important

From the prinmarily support for only tedious characters to the ability to display a variety of images

HTML

the basic file format for the browsing and exchanging of data from Internet/Intranet

is taking an indispensable role. As the development of Web browser

HTML

however

cannot meet the new needs and its disadvantages are becomign obvious. The first shortcoming lies in the fact that the HTML specification adopts fixed tags

which is more limited and meaningless. As a result

intelligent searching on the Internet is rather difficult. In addition

not supporting vector graphics can be another weakness of HTML. Classic Web browsers

such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator

simply display images downloaded from Web sites without any further processing. Meanwhile

the images bring some more shortcomings

too big file size and variable appearances among different devices

for instance. As a solution

SVG

a new image and graphic specification supporting scalable vecor graphics for Web browsing

is put forward. As a member of the XML family

SVG inherits the advantages of XML and fully supports vector graphic

image and text by means of defining extensible tags. The SVG specification is presented in this paper. The characteristics and advantages of the specification are analyzed in detail in the view of technique. A typical example is demonstrated to reinforce the specification. Finally some advice is given at the end of the paper.