Show HN: I built 48 lightweight SVG backgrounds you can copy/paste

(svgbackgrounds.com)

236 points | by visiwig 15 hours ago

25 comments

  • Frannky 8 hours ago
    I am very confused by the comments, they seem too excited for this... Are they real or paid bots? If they are real, kudos to OP
    • postsantum 10 minutes ago
      I wish I was able to be excited over svg backgrounds. How different life would be..
    • visiwig 2 hours ago
      Hey thanks, I didn't pay for bots, unsure how to prove that though.
    • mikodin 4 hours ago
      Unclear but I will say upon opening the site I was sparked with joy and excitement to use them
    • j45 7 hours ago
      There’s likely folks who discovered to that svgs could do many amazing things, except the tooling didn’t seem to be readily available.

      Now when I see someone build something working with SVG, I check it out to see how it might compare to another way of doing it.

    • Frannky 8 hours ago
      It may also be that I am just comment AI paranoid, but yeah, I find myself a lot guessing if there's a person behind a comment or not
  • wackget 5 hours ago
    These are great. Please consider adding a visible <textarea> with the CSS instead of relying on "click to copy" buttons. For security reasons, some users/browsers disable access to the clipboard which means there's no fallback way to copy the CSS.
    • visiwig 3 hours ago
      Solid point, I used to do this, and it wouldn't be hard to go back or add a show code button so users can copy the CSS as text.
  • BoppreH 8 hours ago
    Those are excellent! The orange shingles are my favorite. Though I think some of them are not working on Firefox; the blue and green vortices are rendered as a single blue rectangle and a single green hexagon.

    I wonder how people are using them in a way that is not distracting to the main content. I've found that high-frequency patterns (small details with sharp transitions) can be a bit distracting, but I haven't found a good solution that doesn't compromise the beauty of the backgrounds.

    • echoangle 8 hours ago
      I think it’s kind of common to have the background for the whole document and then have an overlay with a solid color (and maybe less-than-100% opacity if you’re daring) on which the main content with all the text is shown. This works best for browser that are full screen on PC screens of course where you want to limit text width anyways. On mobile or narrow windows, you don’t have a lot of space to show the background.
      • BoppreH 8 hours ago
        Thanks. I'm already doing something similar, but I feel like the background that is visible on the sides is still somewhat distracting. Might be my imagination though.
    • lelanthran 2 hours ago
      > Though I think some of them are not working on Firefox; the blue and green vortices are rendered as a single blue rectangle and a single green hexagon.

      Move the sliders

    • visiwig 3 hours ago
      I took a look at FireFox and I think it's working, but not obvious that you need to slide the top range slider for the full effect. It would look better if I reversed the effect, I'll have to rethink that.
  • hju22_-3 10 hours ago
    The notice about having "access" to the backgrounds is sticky, and takes up one third of the screen on mobile with no way to remove it . . . Why?
    • andai 8 hours ago
      You have access. Enjoy!

      Edit: upon further investigation, access isn't something that's just thrown around willy nilly! It usually goes for $120/yr!

    • visiwig 3 hours ago
      Fair point. Once you click a thumb to preview the button, it becomes the UI to manipulate the backgrounds. I'll take a look and rethink the setup.
  • karlshea 4 hours ago
    Hey thanks so much! I actually found your site a bit over a year ago while I was redoing my portfolio and used one for my header.
    • visiwig 2 hours ago
      You're welcome. Glad you found something useful!
  • gerdesj 7 hours ago
    Not one of these efforts emulate <blink />. I want my money back.
  • jjwiseman 7 hours ago
    I find it odd that there's a custom of blurring or obscuring exactly the thing I'm interested in when I show interest in it by mousing over it.
  • yesthisiswes 7 hours ago
    These are awesome! I’d love to use some of these for my solitaire game.

    Weird thing when I preview one of the backgrounds then scroll down the page on mobile the images disappear. I have to refresh the page to view all the backgrounds again after selecting one.

    I wonder if you should add names for the patterns so we can pick favorites?

    • visiwig 3 hours ago
      Hmmm, that doesn't sound right. Do you mind reaching out to me via the contact form and dropping any more details such as device/browser? BTW, each background does have name, but I hide that on mobile since real estate is limited.
  • ksymph 2 hours ago
    Hmm, the parabolic ones seem to be broken? Both on FF and Chromium, they just display as an outline of a single shape on a black background.
    • lelanthran 2 hours ago
      > Hmm, the parabolic ones seem to be broken? Both on FF and Chromium, they just display as an outline of a single shape on a black background.

      Move the sliders.

  • throwaway2046 10 hours ago
    These are beautiful, thank you for sharing. I really like the one with the triangles, was it inspired by Rule 30?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30

    • visiwig 2 hours ago
      No I've never heard about Rule 30, I would have been nervous to click that link if it wasn't leading to a Wikipedia article, phew, but the concept is quite cool and inspiring. Thanks for sharing that with me!
  • visiwig 15 hours ago
    Each one can be copied as inline SVG or CSS using the background-image property with a data URI. Most are under 1KB.
  • democracy 6 hours ago
    it's great work man - been using your backgrounds for long long time now!
    • visiwig 2 hours ago
      Much appreciated, always nice to hear that :)
  • aerhardt 9 hours ago
    This is very cool but hasn’t it been around for like a decade?
    • visiwig 3 hours ago
      Good memory. I launched in 2018 (8 years ago) and have been adding more graphics over the years -- doubling this specific collection / freebies.
  • dormento 12 hours ago
    This rocks. Thank you!
    • visiwig 12 hours ago
      Glad you think so, you're welcome, enjoy!
  • pseudosavant 9 hours ago
    I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff, but I'm usually disappointed after clicking the link. These on the other hand are excellent, and that they have configurable options like stroke, color, etc is gravy on the top. Thanks for sharing!
    • visiwig 3 hours ago
      Thanks for the kind words! I've played around a lot with SVG and love how you can change various attributes to achieve cool effects.
  • 3duardol1m455 2 hours ago
    this matches my experience exactly
  • thekevan 9 hours ago
    This is top notch, great work!
  • dylanhouli 11 hours ago
    Great idea man, must be pulling in some good SEO traffic as well.
    • Frannky 8 hours ago
      Like this user has a comment history of hyping show HN
      • dylanhouli 3 hours ago
        I mean isn't that what show HN is for? Plus wasn't just hype, I was generally interested in getting more info on the SEO side of this project.

        I've had a lot of nice people try out my own projects and leave comments in the past and it meant a lot to me so I'm just trying to pass that forward.

    • visiwig 11 hours ago
      Yes, I was lucky enough to find a keyword domain that was available. Would recommend :)
  • starkparker 15 hours ago
    What's the license?
    • visiwig 15 hours ago
      The license can be found here: svgbackgrounds.com/license

      Summary: You can use graphics in personal or commercial projects, you cannot use the graphics as the primary integrity of your product, you must provide attribution (svgbackgrounds.com/attribution)

      And before anyone rips off my head, attribution can be placed inside commented out code, so it doesn't need to take away from your design.

  • shah4as1 8 hours ago
    this is exactly what i needed
    • visiwig 3 hours ago
      Glad I shared at the right time :)
  • AbrarTheCrypt34 6 hours ago
    saved for later. exactly the kind of deep dive i was looking for
  • Theodores 8 hours ago
    What is your authoring tool for SVG?

    The SVG code is well written. It is neither Adobe bloat-spam-slop and neither is it overly SVGOMG'd.

    For picky SVG people you could have some easy way to present the code. Only a minority value quality SVG, artworkers do not look at SVG code and coders just see SVG as 'assets' from the artworker. SVG therefore has not evolved to a full art form.

    • visiwig 3 hours ago
      Hey great eye. I generally design in Illustrator with a plugin by Astute graphics that allows me to reduce unnecessary anchor points, run the exported SVG through SVGOMG, and then spend solid time hand coding each background in VS Code with the SVG extension by Jock that let's me see a live preview. Then on the actual site the customizer script I wrote will catch some attributes that aren't needed and remove them, but it's far from perfect.
  • decker502 7 hours ago
    [dead]
  • realaliarain74 6 hours ago
    [dead]
  • HalawehMohann49 10 hours ago
    [flagged]