There is a huge need for a simple way to browse SVG files in Windows.  There is currently no way to easily look through a set of thumbnails for a folder of SVG images to find the one you want (as you can do, for example, by choosing the Thumbnails view in Windows Explorer).

The closest thing I have managed to find after extensive searching on the 'Net is the CADImage plugin for Irfanview.  This however renders SVG images so poorly (many are simply black silhouttes) as to be useless.  There is apparently an option for browsing SVG files in Adobe Bridge, but this is part of an extremely expensive piece of software used only by professional graphics artists.

The lack of a simple browser can be traced to the difficulty of implementing SVG rendering.  However, Firefox (and Opera) has excellent built-in support for displaying SVG files in the browser.

My proposal therefore is for a very simple utility/Firefox extension, that will prepare an HTML page that is a contact sheet for all the SVG files in a directory.  One specifies the directory, then the utility writes an HTML page with all the SVG images embedded in the page, at thumbnail size, with the full name of the files (as a link) below each image.  This page is then opened in a new tab in Firefox.

One then has a page displaying all the SVG images in the directory.  One can click on the name of any image to load it into whatever editor one has associated with the .svg file extension.

One can also save the contact sheet, by printing it to a PDF utility like PrimoPDF.  Or, if one wants to preserve the links, simply cut & paste the page into OpenOffice Writer, and export it as a PDF (which will preserve the links).

Ideally the utilty will rember the last few directories one has accessed, and could also have a Favourites list of directories.  It should also allow for the option of processing subdirectories as well (and the names of these directories should appear as headings on the HTML page).

If you are interested in developing such an extension, please let others know (to prevent duplication of effort!), by adding a comment below.