Rubyist's Guide to the Canvas API
summary
Canvas is a 2D immediate‑mode API that can be learned quickly, but real work comes from patterns: run a custom game loop that uses requestAnimationFrame over setTimeout to avoid millisecond drift, queue input/server events, update entity state, then draw. Use an entity + draw‑primitive split (position in the entity, pixel work in the primitive) with off‑screen canvases for double buffering. Tests stub the ~38 canvas calls and run headless with jsdom + a stubbed canvas and mocha; profiling uses Chrome Canary timeline and console.time. Entities + draw‑primitives enables swapping UI controls and gameplay sprites; requestAnimationFrame yields much smoother frames.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction to canvas
- 2:58Canvas API overview
- 6:32Game loop fundamentals
- 11:08Optimizing with requestAnimationFrame
- 14:16Designing the game loop
- 16:45Entities and drawing primitives
- 23:03Testing with stubs
- 26:07Q&A and performance tips
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