One SVG file, many SVG gradients inside

Question

I’m making a set of buttons which use dynamic gradients. I’ve taken care of Firefox 3.6+ and WebKit by using their proprietary CSS extensions and all I need to do is support Opera, iOS and IE9 by using background-image: url("gradient.svg").

This is relatively easy, I made an SVG file, linked it and got it working. However, I’m making a set so I need at least 6 gradients. When I normally do it in images, I create a sprite for fast HTTP access. I’m not sure how to achieve this in SVG – can I use one file and access different parts of its XML by using #identifiers, like XBL does?

My current SVG:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" 
         "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">
<svg version="1.1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
    <defs>
        <linearGradient id="select-gradient" x1="0" x2="0" y1="0" y2="1">
            <stop offset="0%" stop-color="rgb(231,244,248)"/>
            <stop offset="100%" stop-color="rgb(207,233,241)"/>
        </linearGradient>
        <style type="text/css">
          rect {
          fill: url(#select-gradient);
          }
      </style>
    </defs>
    <rect x="0" y="0" rx="6" ry="6" height="100%" width="100%"/>
</svg> 

And then I have CSS:

.button-1 {
  background-image: url("gradient-1.svg");
}

.button-2 {
  background-image: url("gradient-2.svg");
}

I want to do something like this:

.button-1 {
  background-image: url("gradient.svg#gradient1");
}

.button-2 {
  background-image: url("gradient.svg#gradient2");
}

Is it even possible? Can you help me out? I really don’t wanna push 6 XML files when I can do it with one.

Answer 1

If you just want gradients for button backgrounds, most of this can be acheived in css. For the remaining browsers, ie6 + can user ms filters: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms532847.aspx

iOS uses webkit to render, so you can use -webkit vendor prefix. Unfortunately you will still need svg for opera, but this may make it easier (or just use a normal image sprite for opera's 1% of users)