While creating Azure architectural and concepts drawings, my first step is to gather the most current Azure Icons that I will be using in the diagram(s).
I prefer using SVG format icons/symbols for drawings, because their image quality is maintained no matter how they’re resized or moved. The problem is, having extracted a downloaded a zip file of the latest Azure icons/symbol set, the SVG format of all the icons cannot be previewed as thumbnails in Windows File Explorer. You can only see the name, as in the screen-shot below – I need to be able to see preview/overview thumbnails of all the SVG files – as I can for .PNG files! A thumbnail viewer will save a lot of time choosing the correct set of SVG icons needed for a drawing!
Go from this view in Windows File Explorer….
To This – Seeing Thumbnails of the Same SVG folder!
There is an SVG Viewer Extension for Windows File Explorer that can be downloaded from GitHub. This is the 32-bit installer and this is the 64-bit installer.
How to Install the SVG Viewer Extension:
1. Download the correct architecture for your system (32-bit or 64-bit).
2. Click on the file to open it…Windows will probably not let you, giving you this error:
You can install from the command prompt. It is necessary to bypass the UAC to get the exe to install – otherwise Windows blocks it.
3. Open command prompt as an administrator and move to the directory the exe has been downloaded to – see the steps we used in the screen shot below:
4. The software will begin to install – follow through the steps:
The program is shown as installed (and can easily be uninstalled from here too) in Control Panel:
Now, the same list of SVG files shown in detail view, can be seen as thumbnails when Large or Extra Large Icons are selected in View:
On this Windows File Viewer, the extension is using Chrome to open the SVG extension files. Remember – this is ONLY a viewer – but so helpful for scrolling through a list of SVG files to find the correct icons needed for setting up for drawing Azure layouts.