Canvas element

Background. The Canvas element “is a new HTML element which can be used to draw graphics using scripting”. Simple shapes, curves, gradients, transformations and animations are possible with Canvas.

Early days. I love the idea, but the implementation seems sketchy right now. It’s not in IE but also there is no support for writing text outside of Firefox.

Change of approach. Canvas is a big step away from the web development conventions you know. Coordinates are all important and it’s just not OO enough for me. I’ve created a bar chart demo (probably the easiest thing you can make) but moving onto creating more complex examples just became frustrating because of the way images can only be drawn when loaded, which stops any loops.

External links. Mozilla Canvas tutorial

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