[whatwg] Canvas element

[Dimitri Glazkov]

On 4/20/05, Anne van Kesteren <fora at annevankesteren.nl> wrote:

> > Isn't the main functional value behind the canvas element is the
> > rendering context? If so, what is the significance of the canvas
> > element itself? Take away the behavior, and you've got yourself
> > another SPACER tag.
> 
> Not really. Since you know what the element is for it has some
> additional semantics. Which can be used I guess one way or another.

Ok, let me rephrase that. What is the *content* significance of the
the canvas element? Semantically, it's a placeholder for some
multimedia behavior, the nature of which is not know from the
perspective of content. That's just begging for all kinds of abuse.

Besides, in terms of progressive enhancement, you are actually
defining an element in the markup that is _meant_ to regress
gracelessly.

Canvas element, IMHO, is part of the declarative application
development school of thought, and this school of thought does not mix
very well with the structural markup school of thought. As an element,
canvas belongs more with the XAML people than with the XHTML people.

Or maybe WA1 is indeed about declarative application development? You
guys tell me. I certainly don't see how you could mix the two (and you
would have to, if you strive to become HTML5) and still get away with
something that is not a frankenstein.

Instead of this:

<canvas id="weightedTags">A neat, animated graph representation of
Technorati tags, which you poor slob can't see because your agent
doesn't support it.</canvas>

I would rather see this:

<ol id="weightedTags">
<li class="weight-3">Stuff</li>
<!-- ... more tags -->
</ol>

with this as bound behavior:

var weightedTags = document.getElementById("weightedTags");
var context = weightedTags.getContext("CanvasRenderingContext2D");
// use content of the weightedTags to draw with context
// ...

Does this make any sense?

:DG<