Webnerd
07-03-2010, 07:04 PM
I have been trying recently, to get a good feel of the HTML 5 Canvas element with no luck. I have found that developing for the new canvas tag is cumbersome, time intensive and in a lot of cases, overkill.
I have seen some great examples of usage but what I constantly miss is the ability to tie events to individual objects without extraneous effort or a library.
There are libraries out there to make it easier like Sprout, Processing.js and others but damn! Just when you feel, as if you are a rock-solid frontend developer, you have to make this paradigm shift to learn yet another way of relaying a message for something as simple as a website. HTML 5 is the new "AJAX". Employers are asking potential new-hires if they have skills in this "new language" without really understanding what the hell they are asking for - typical for a new "buzz-word" market.
Truth be told though, 90% of what clients want with UI interactivity can be accomplished through the use of traditional Javascript using a helper library like jQuery, MooTools or ExtJS. So, I don't buy the HTML 5 canvas tag for practical web development.
Think about it, the only developers using the canvas tag are ones that are experimenting with it's features. In the real billable work "web" world, the experimental examples are not very applicable and can in most cases, be accomplished with methods that are already available.
Find me a client that will pay $$$ for a developer to use the canvas tag instead of a more SEO friendly and dynamic XHTML/Javascript/jQuery solution.
Sidenote, canvas has been available since Firefox 1.5 (2005), sure has caught some traction...(5 years later)
I have seen some great examples of usage but what I constantly miss is the ability to tie events to individual objects without extraneous effort or a library.
There are libraries out there to make it easier like Sprout, Processing.js and others but damn! Just when you feel, as if you are a rock-solid frontend developer, you have to make this paradigm shift to learn yet another way of relaying a message for something as simple as a website. HTML 5 is the new "AJAX". Employers are asking potential new-hires if they have skills in this "new language" without really understanding what the hell they are asking for - typical for a new "buzz-word" market.
Truth be told though, 90% of what clients want with UI interactivity can be accomplished through the use of traditional Javascript using a helper library like jQuery, MooTools or ExtJS. So, I don't buy the HTML 5 canvas tag for practical web development.
Think about it, the only developers using the canvas tag are ones that are experimenting with it's features. In the real billable work "web" world, the experimental examples are not very applicable and can in most cases, be accomplished with methods that are already available.
Find me a client that will pay $$$ for a developer to use the canvas tag instead of a more SEO friendly and dynamic XHTML/Javascript/jQuery solution.
Sidenote, canvas has been available since Firefox 1.5 (2005), sure has caught some traction...(5 years later)