Boxy SVG 4+

Only One Complaint

I absolutely love this as a tracing/SVG generator software. Straightforward, simple to use. My only complaint is the default is to fill in any shape you create with the spline tool. I have to go over to the paint tool with every single design and unclick the fill button (paintbrush). It's annoying as crap because you have to stop mid-way through your project and go do this. Why is this the default? Makes no sense.

Developer Response ,

You could change the default style of newly created objects via tool settings, please check https://boxy-svg.com/questions/153 for more details. Also note that if an object has only a stroke and no fill, you will have to zoom it in and hit precisely the stroked area to grab a style from it.

Best native SVG support!

This app blows all of the big boys out of the water when it comes to NATIVE SVG support. We don't get silly substitutes like rasterized bitmaps with extensive clipping paths (Adobe Illustrator, Sketch). No,… we get clean SVGs that have full support for symbol, font, pattern, color definitions. This is so fragging awesome. I swore that I was going to have an app developed myself if I couldn't ever find something that supports SVG. It really seems as though everyone else has given up trying and has decided that supporting SVG's specifications is not a big priority. It's such a relief that somebody thought it was actually a wise endeavour. Kudos to Jaroslaw Foksa for his work. I really do like this hidden gem and I'm glad I was checking out the latest developments in Electron or I wouldnt have caught on.

Something like an early beta

Seems to consistently display imported SVGs different than other programs, including transforms being off, objects showing a fill when they shouldnt, and other things being wrong; similar sorts of issues also seem to happen when opening SVG files made by Boxy SVG in other programs. This is quite odd since it is clearly an ELectron based app, so I would expect it to display SVGs the same way Chrome does.
It is missing basic functionality other low-end/free programs have like adding drop shadows or blur to lines and such.
The only XML editor that I could find in the program (i.e., the “Elements Panel”), which was necassary to get anything done, was also clearly just the Chromium developers tools, so no better than just using a standard browser to edit the SVGs.

The interface is nicely straightforward, which makes doing simple things convenient, but it is good for only really doing simple things.

Overall, I’ve wasted enough time with Boxys bugs and limitations, so back to the free alternatives (InkScape, Vectr, etc) for me, for now.

Developer Response ,

Boxy SVG uses the same rendering engine as Chrome and therefore it should render 99% of SVG files exactly the same way.

The remaining 1% are the files that make heavy use of "use" and "foreginObject" elements or contain external references. Those features are hard to support due to their complexity or platform restrictions. There is no editor that would fully support the entire SVG standard, but I would dare to say that Boxy SVG is one of the very few editors that comes close to it.

If some SVG file does not render correctly, please send it to jarek@boxy-svg.com or open an issue on the public bug tracker (https://boxy-svg.com/bugs) so that I could investigate it further.

If you want to check whether Boxy SVG will be able to open your SVG file before purchasing it, please open Chrome, go to https://boxy-svg.com/app and drag the SVG file from the file manager into the web app canvas.

I have implemented the "Elements" panel from scratch, it does not share any code with the Chrome / Chromium developer tools (though it has similar look and feel). I'm planning to greatly improve this panel later this year.