Discover HTML5 Canvas essentials, draw shapes, delve into transformations and animations, and explore interactive applications with advanced mouse and keyboard handling. Gain insights into creating dynamic web graphics.

Kirupa is an MIT grad who works at Microsoft as Senior Program Manager. He has been tinkering with web technologies since 1998. He works on the Edge browser team where he gets to sink his teeth into the cutting-edge web technologies.

HTML5 is taking over the browsers and one of the coolest things in HTML5 is the canvas - the immediate mode drawing surface you have in HTML for bringing pixels to life using JavaScript. It is used to create games, graphs, and animations.

This is an extensive course with interactive playgrounds (so you don't have to install anything). The course can be divided into four parts.

1. Understand basics of Canvas and compare it with DOM.
2. Learn how to draw shapes.
3. Take a deep dive into canvas transformations and animations.
4. Explore advanced mouse and keyboard handling to create truly interactive applications using canvas.

If none of what I just wrote makes sense, then the content here is just what you need 😀 . Let's get started.

HTML5 Canvas: From Noob to Ninja - an interactive deep dive

Putting pixels on the canvas is really no different than how you would sketch or doodle using a pencil:

Using a pencil, let's say you want to draw a funny four-sided shape that looks as follows:

The way you would do this is as follows:

1. Find a spot on a piece of paper or a sketchpad
2. Pick up the pencil
3. Move pencil to the point you want to start your drawing
4. Press pencil down and draw a line to create one side of this shape
5. Press pencil down from where your last line ended to draw another line to create another side of this shape
6. Keep drawing lines until your shape is complete. Your last line will end at the point you started from to create a closed shape
7. Adjust the thickness and color of the outline by going over it a few times with a different and thicker pencil
8. Color the insides of your shape yellow

DOM vs. Canvas

Getting Started with the Canvas

Drawing Basics / Lines

Drawing Curves

Drawing Multiple Things

Drawing Rectangles (and Squares)

Drawing Triangles

Drawing Circles

Modifying How Your Corners Look

Working with Colors

Drawing Text

Drawing Images

Canvas Transformations

Structuring Your Drawing Code

Animating with requestAnimationFrame

Creating Animations on the Canvas

Animating Many Things on the Canvas

Creating Motion Trails

Creating Sprite Animations

Working With the Mouse

Follow the Mouse Cursor

Mouse Follow with Ease

Working With the Keyboard

Moving Shapes Using the Keyboard

Resizing the HTML Canvas Element

Detect Whether a Font is Installed

How Drawing in the Real World Works