Canvas Cheat Sheet

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet
HTML5 Canvas Text Font, Size, and Style Tutorial
HTML5 has brought some exciting new advantages to the HTML coding world. Canvas allows you to render graphics powered by Javascript. So throw away that flash code and dive into Canvas. Here you will find the best tutorials and resources to learn Canvas and other HTML5 aspects.

  • HTML5 Canvas Animated Bubbles
    Use this code to create a fun animated bubbles effect using your HTML5 canvas. The bubbles move up the screen, are transparent, and constantly moving.

  • HTML5 Colorful Animated Tiles
    This code demonstrates how to use your canvas to create colorful animated tiles.

  • HTML5 Canvas Exploding Dots
    Use this code to add a cool animated effect to your HTML5 canvas where dots appear to explode across the canvas.

  • HTML5 Canvas Shadow Text Tutorial
    Use this code to add different shadows to your canvas text. In canvas, there are 4 different shadow properties: offsetX, offsetY, shadowColor, and shadowBlur. Offsets X and Y are just the values at which the shadow should be separated from the actual text. shadowColor refers to the color of the shadow -- this one needs to be set because the default shadowColor value is transparent, meaning the a shadow won't be visible unless you set this. shadowBlur takes a numerical value and smoothes the edges of the shadow to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

  • HTML5 Canvas Bursting Particle Effect
    Experiment with this bursting particle effect code to enhance your canvas animation skills.

  • HTML5 Canvas Gradient Text Tutorial
    Adding gradients and shadows to text within the HTML5 canvas is an easy way to create some texture in your designs. Customize the colors and the shadow blur and make it your own!

  • HTML5 Canvas Paint Application
    Creating a simple paint application using HTML5 Canvas is easy and fun. Once you feel comfortable with this code, be sure to play around with different "paint brush" colors, shapes, and sizes.

  • HTML5 Canvas Text Wrap Tutorial

    To wrap text with HTML5 Canvas, we can create a custom function that requires the canvas context, a text string, a position, a max width, and a line height. The function should use the measureText() method of the canvas context to calculate when the next line should wrap.


  • HTML5 Canvas Text Metrics Tutorial

    To get the text metrics of HTML5 Canvas text, we can use the measureText() method of the canvas context which returns an object containing a width property.  This method requires a text string and returns a metrics object based on the provided text and the current text font assigned to the context.

    Note: Since the height of the text in pixels is equal to the font size in pts when the font is defined with the font property of the canvas context, the metrics object returned from measureText() does not provide a height metric.


  • HTML5 Canvas Start and Stop an Animation

    To start an HTML5 Canvas animation, we can can continually request a new animation frame, and to stop the HTML5 Canvas animation, we can simply not request a new animation frame.

    Instructions: Click on the canvas to start and stop the animation.