(Disclaimer: I am writing a currently-unreleased jquery-based canvas helper)
I really like the idea here, and am all for more people using the canvas element, but I don't really think the built in canvas API is unwieldy, or even remotely foreign to anyone working on the web.
The only interesting functionality exposed in the API that I could find was some basic animation - defining a translation, saving the context of the canvas (for later rendering?) and then running the animation. Can anyone explain why this is interesting? Maybe it's a little early to pass judgement?
edit: Okay, the support for tags on objects you draw onto the canvas is pretty useful. This would definitely be useful for anyone developing a canvas game.
My idea wasn't to replace the Canvas API but to supplement it with a framework that allows for even faster/easier development. Hopefully in the way that jQuery doesn't replace JS but makes DOM manipulation and UI programming faster/easier.
Okay, this makes a lot more sense now. I'll definitely be watching this to see where you take it, since quick development of canvas applications is something we could definitely use more of.
I find the raw canvas API to be a little bit clunky and unwieldy. The syntactic sugar makes it a lot more likely that I'll use canvas without a second thought.
Making something more pleasant, even just a little bit, can lower the barrier enough to get a lot of people going.
I really like the idea here, and am all for more people using the canvas element, but I don't really think the built in canvas API is unwieldy, or even remotely foreign to anyone working on the web.
The only interesting functionality exposed in the API that I could find was some basic animation - defining a translation, saving the context of the canvas (for later rendering?) and then running the animation. Can anyone explain why this is interesting? Maybe it's a little early to pass judgement?
edit: Okay, the support for tags on objects you draw onto the canvas is pretty useful. This would definitely be useful for anyone developing a canvas game.