SVG Icons * BlueSphere Icon Theme

SVG Icons project has a goal to provide Open-Source reference implementation of SVG icon themes for leading Linux and UNIX Desktop Environments, in particular (but not limited to) KDE3 and GNOME2 Desktop environments.

SVG implementation for icons and other User Interface elements provides better rendering quality (due to extensive usage of anti-aliasing), reduces amount of disk space used, and decreases download time for icon themes over the web. Developing icons in SVG also dramatically reduces development cycle, and allows to deliver results quickly, in prompted timeframe.

How all this is done?

All icons in BlueSphere theme are designed using SVG format. I have used Sodipodi vector-drawing program, and partially hand-crafted SVG (XML) files using KWrite. I have used librsvg2 for rendering, together with Sodipodi itself.

The librsvg SVG renderer used by GNOME 2.2 is able to handle all the icons in the bluesphere theme. However even with this renderer there might be some icons which doesn't render perfectly due to rendering bugs, but librsvg is being activly maintained so any issues you might encouter will hopefully be quickly resolved.

What is currently available?

For GNOME 2.2 and newer, it is currently easiest to get the Spheres and Crystals metatheme. We are working on creating a standalone BlueSphere GNOME package however.

For KDE, which do not currently support SVG icons, we have made the theme available in pixmap format from kde-look.

What is in the theme?

There are about 150 icons in 0.2.3 release, designed from the scratch. Other missing icons are "inherited" from HiColor theme under KDE and GNOME default under GNOME at a moment. We plan on expanding the theme to include more icons over time.

BlueSphere icon theme is licensed under BSD-like license, so you can use those icons in both open-source and commercial projects.

Mailing lists and Community

I invite you to join svgicons-devel mailing list, and discuss SVG icons, usage of SVG graphics in modern User Interface and related topics on that list. svgicons-annouce list has been estabilished to announce new releases of SVG icons.

Screenshots