HTML 5 Canvas for Dummies - Free Sample Chapter

A Quick Glimpse Behind the Canvas

Developers of the Canvas standard could have named their new creation anything they wanted. They could have called it an area, pad, space, or any number of other possibilities. They chose Canvas, with its obvious artistic implications. There is significant technical detail behind the implementation of Canvas, but at its core, the intent is to provide a new way to satisfy the urge for expression not so different from that behind prehistoric drawings on cave walls.

HTML5 Canvas is a digital version of the surfaces that have teased the imagination of mankind for thousands of years. Adding the power of computing to traditional media concepts creates an amazing combination. No need to imagine horses galloping or geese flying. Now they can move.

In this chapter, you get a first look at how HTML5 Canvas works and how to create your own compelling Canvas applications. You get a glimpse behind the Canvas to see what makes it tick.

Get started with HTML5 !

You've heard of it : HTML 5. Everybody is using it. It's being heralded as the savior of the internet, allowing people to create rich, engaging web pages without to using Flash and Shockwave. But what actually is it?

Well, that's not an easy question to answer. HTML 5 is used to describe a really diverse group of things. It's a standard of writing web pages. It's a collections of APIs. It's a new way of adding interactivity to web pages. HTML is all that and more. So what's this book about? I'am going to assume that you at some point have touched on HTML and CSS. Perhaps, you've created your own wordpress theme, or edited a Myspace layout back in the day. Perhaps you've read MakeUseOf's very own XHTML guide.

The point is, I'm assuming that you know your way around a web page dan that we discuss in this guide won't be too alien to you. The aim of this guide is not to reach you the entirely of HTML 5. That would be entirely out of the scope of this book. The aim is to provide a gentle introduction to these amazing new web technologies, and to show you some cool ways of incorporating them into your websites.