Comments on: Canto.js: An Improved Canvas API

By: jhartmann

jhartmann — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:16:12 +0000

Can any one else see my comments? I can’t see my comment about wanting to find a new site unless I’m logged in.

By: genericallyloud

genericallyloud — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:11:36 +0000

@ifwdev: yeah… surprised nobody has really stepped up. Is there an open call for contributors/editors?

By: vjeux

vjeux — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:12:47 +0000

@ifwdev: same as you … :(

By: pianoroy

pianoroy — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:35:07 +0000

@adunn – Thanks for the link!
I also periodically check Chris Heilmann’s and Michael Mahemoff’s blogs (available on the links at the right). They’re smart and they have interesting and relevant things to say.

By: adunn

adunn — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:05:26 +0000

http://dailyjs.com/ – purely javascript site, some similar content though.

By: leptons

leptons — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:21:46 +0000

@ifwdev yeah, me too – this site seems a bit dead now. what is everyone else reading instead of ajaxian now?

By: ifwdev

ifwdev — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:31:30 +0000

For some reason I still check this site daily. I think that is about to change though…

By: jhartmann

jhartmann — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 12:12:26 +0000

This is totally off topic… but now that the guys have gone, we’ve got from 1-2 posts a day to 1-2 a week. If this keeps up, Ajaxian is going to fall off my radar. Any one got another Ajax focused website I can start checking out?

By: brettz9

brettz9 — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:15:03 +0000

If you just want method chaining in Canvas, see https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Code_snippets/Canvas

By: McDaid

McDaid — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:04:04 +0000

@sixtyseconds

You are correct SVG has that advantage, with canvas any time anything changes I repaint the whole canvas. In browser with native canvas, it is very fast and so this doesn’t really matter. In internet explorer using explorer canvas this a bit more problematic, and animations will become choppy if there are many calculations and objects being drawn.

SVG is much better if mouse interactions are needed, because mouse events can be attached to any svg shape.

@Stakka

Unless you are writing a game and want the best possible frame rate, I don’t think using the library is going to adversely affect performance. If you want to draw a complex shape such as the famous SVG lion then a function of some kind is needed to process all the points, lines, curves etc. Writing the code the long way would require a longer download time also affecting performance.

By: Stakka

Stakka — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:03:04 +0000

The Canvas API sure could be better, but adding another API layer that affect performance for a bit of syntactic sugar seems like a bad choice.

To write less code, use ‘with’:
with (canvas.getContext('2d')) beginPath(), moveTo(100,100), lineTo(200,200), lineTo(100,200), stroke();

Sure ‘with’ also has a performance penalty, but less than canton.js wrapped function calls.

By: mchammer

mchammer — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:00:10 +0000

Well done! Very impressive.

By: sixtyseconds

sixtyseconds — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:00:00 +0000

@McDaid – The thing i really prefer about using SVG as opposed to canvas is being able to script the elements afterwards.

By: Jadet

Jadet — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:14:41 +0000

Very nice, I like how it handles SVG path strings.

By: kixo

kixo — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:02:40 +0000

It would be nice to have something like this as jQuery plugin.

By: McDaid

McDaid — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:59:18 +0000

@sixtyseconds

I did try Raphael, but initially had problems with it not working on my computer set up in Internet Explorer. The issue has now been fixed, but it put me off a bit using the library.

The API for canvas can be slightly tedious to work with at first, but I think it is actually very powerful after a bit of practice.

By: rasmusfl0e

rasmusfl0e — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:25:52 +0000

It’s kind of silly that the canvas API is so bad that you have put an abstraction layer on top of it… Of course – getting an API right in one go is very hard. Especially if you have no clue what people are going to use it, how and for what.

By: sixtyseconds

sixtyseconds — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:18:36 +0000

@McDaid – Tried Raphael? (http://www.raphaeljs.com)

By: McDaid

McDaid — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:53:16 +0000

I currently using a lot of canvas on a project and it can be a bit of a pain, as it is very low level. So I would like to try out the library, but I think lack of Internet Explorer support is a real deal breaker.

SVG probably would have been a better fit for my project, but lack of support in Internet Explorer, forced me into using explorer-canvas.js. So far I am really impressed with how well this successfully emulates a real canvas.

I do like the look of the library, the svgpath function is particularly useful.