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Making url links clickable in Inkscape

I wanted to build my Resume and I was thinking of the right tool for the job. When it comes to making a resume, I can think of the usual tools like Microsoft Word, Latex or any word processing tools for that matter. I was not so keen on using a word processing tool for the job. I was feeling a little creative and I thought, why not create it using the tool that I am familiar with.

For those that do not know me, I use Inkscape and Aseprite in my own free time and I am rather familiar with both tools. I decided to try making my own resume with Inkscape. For those who have no idea, Inkscape is a vector art drawing program. I found a template for a resume that I liked from the internet and I tried to design my resume based on that template.

The resume was done in about 2 hours and I really like the end result. I sent it to my career advisor and one of the feedbacks I got was the resume needs clickable url links especially to my website and/or my email. I decided that, well adding a link would not be that hard right? I was wrong, inkscape have no easy way to have clickable links. I did some research and I found a rather simple way to do that.

The most simplest way that I found was using a web browser to export the svg files that is created by Inkscape. I have tried this on firefox and chrome and it works.

Below is the instructions to create your own clickable links.

  1. Create a text/url that you want to display.

  2. Group the text/url. (This is a shortcut to make the text into an object for the next step).

  3. Right click on the object that you want to have a clickable link, select "Create Link".

  4. Inkscape will have a new panel, input the link to open inside the href field.

  5. Done. Save the file as an svg.

  6. Open the svg file in a web browser (tested on firefox and chrome) and click print.

  7. Make sure to print to file and the file will be in a .pdf format.

This are the steps that I did to create clickable urls in Inkscape. I have included a test.svg file to try.

TL;DR Save file as .svg, open with browser and print to file.