For those who aren’t familiar, Canvas is an HTML5 element which enables you to do script-based drawing, specifically Javascript. While not natively supported by the IE’s, the wonderful Explorer Canvas script works very well in converting Canvas drawing to the IE-supported VML. While I hear you can’t do everything with Explorer Canvas, most drawing, coloring, and animations will work just fine.

After getting around the initial mind-warp of drawing with script, Canvas has proven itself to be flexible, fast, and fun, and although it’s very new and not (officially) globally supported, I would recommend that anyone who’s considering adopting it to do so.

There’s quite a few reasons I suggest this. First, it will lighten the load on the client-side quite a bit. You end up with some seriously simplified CSS (there’s no browser inconsistencies with canvas drawing), and a lot less images, which saves both bandwidth and http requests. Gradients, shadows, transparency, and rounded corners become nothing but an afterthought to develop (screw sliding doors), and theming becomes as easy as changing some hex values (or rgb, or hsv… it’s easy like that).

Without giving too much away, Canvas is going to be a big part of some upcoming releases at Zenbe, and I couldn’t be more stoked about it. It’s done very well in the tests so far, and I’m looking forward to being on the bleeding-edge of client-side web development. Officially and thoroughly.

Expect to hear more Canvas stuff from me in the upcoming months. After I wrap up my work with it at Zenbe, I plan on continuing development with it, releasing some core classes open-source to help gain support for this extremely powerful drawing framework.