Current State of Javascript Canvas Libraries?

ericbowden picture ericbowden · Jan 20, 2012 · Viewed 41.1k times · Source

I have been doing research on HTML canvas libraries and I came across this question. What is the current state of the art in HTML canvas JavaScript libraries and frameworks? that was asked in 2010. The top answer was Fabric.js. After doing a bit more research I came across http://www.html5canvastutorials.com/ which features tutorials on KineticJs, that boasts having multiple canvases for speed. A bit more research later revealed that Canvas libraries seem to be all over the place when it comes to speed and features. What is the current state of JavaScript Canvas libraries and frameworks today? Has one come out on top?

EDIT: Since libraries are ever changing and a lot of people have recently been coming here for news and info on new libraries I changed the question to be more timeless.

Answer

kangax picture kangax · Jan 20, 2012

Disclaimer: I'm the author of Fabric.js.

I would say that Easel.js, Fabric.js, and Paper.js are among the most used at the moment. I'm judging by the number of Github watchers for each repository, volume of discussion in their Google Groups, and how often I hear about them used as canvas libraries on Twitter.

These are also the ones with more or less decent documentation, examples/demos, discussion groups, and unit tests (the state of testing in most other canvas libraries is pretty sad).

I'm also maintaining this comparison table of various canvas libraries, where you can see how recently the library was updated, its size, support for IE<9 or node.js, and more.