What is HTML5 Canvas and What Does It Offer?

HTML5 Canvas is used to create animation, entertainment applications, and games for the Web. HTML5 Canvas enables you to create animated graphics in different web browsers by means of HTML and JavaScript. It offers great visuals and provides immense freedom to do what you want in the browser window.

All you need to start programming HTML5 Canvas is an up-to-date web browser and a text editor. You can use any latest version of web browsers like Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, or Internet Explorer (version 9 or higher).

For those web developers who deal with HTML and JavaScript it should be easy to use HTML5 Canvas.

HTML5 is the current version of HTML (HyperText Markup Language), which was first used in 1993, and it was the impetus that caused the rapid development of the World Wide Web.

HTML5 Canvas is an immediate mode bitmapped area of the screen that can be manipulated with JavaScript. Immediate mode is the way the program displays pixels on the screen. HTML5 Canvas uses calls from JavaScript to completely copy the bitmapped screen on every frame.

The basic HTML5 Canvas API includes a 2D context that allows a programmer to draw different shapes, render text, and transfer images directly onto a defined area of the browser window. You can apply various colors, pixel manipulations, rotate images, use alpha transparencies, lines, curves, boxes, and fills to alter the shapes, text, and images you draw on the canvas. With HTML5 Canvas you can create brilliant animations, applications, and games.

Let’s face it – games are what used to attract many of us to computers, and games continue to be a major driving force that stimulates the development of computer technology. Playing games in a browser has become one of the most popular hobbies of Internet users. Using HTML5 Canvas web developers can draw directly to a specific area of the browser. As a result, game development in JavaScript has become even more powerful than ever before.

Going Mobile!

You can also use HTML5 Canvas application on the iPhone using PhoneGap technology. It allows an HTML application to run natively on an iPhone by packaging the application as a Safari Mobile “app.” This app can be run from the iPhone interface. In the time when everyone is making, planning to make, or thinking of making applications for mobile devices HTML5 Canvas is a good option to choose.