HTML Canvas - Environmental Setup

One of the best applications of the canvas is that it works on any browser which is equipped with HTML5 and JavaScript support. This makes it so versatile and easy to work on. All the browsers available today such as Chrome, Opera, Mozilla, Edge, and Safari are equipped with JavaScript support. Hence any editor that can be used to display HTML and JavaScript code can be used to work with the HTML5 Canvas element. Furthermore, your browser must be permitted to access and execute JavaScript code. Below is the table which contains browser names and version numbers from which HTML5 canvas can be supported.

Browser Name	Canvas Support
Google Chrome	4.0 and above
Microsoft Edge	9.0 and above
Mozilla Firefox	2.0 and above
Opera	3.1 and above
Apple Safari	9.0 and above

The basic requirements needed for implementing 2D dynamic graphical designs and visualization effects using the Canvas element are listed below

A text editor

To write code in. This could be any text editor such as Visual Studio Code (VS code), Notepad++, Sublime Text, or Atom. We cannot use document editors to create the Canvas element as we cannot use JavaScript only in hybrid editors. I recommend Sublime Text or Visual Studio Code as they are very easy to script. Visual Studio Code comes with an in-built local server to run the web programs on the local server with a random port. Sublime text is equipped with easy tools which make it simpler to use and work on. There are also several online compilers such as codepen.io which make it easier to work on without downloading any IDE.

Web browsers

To test code in webpages and understand it's structure. Currently, the most-used browsers are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera Browser and Apple Safari. You should also test how your site performs on mobile devices and on any old browsers your target audience may still be using (such as IE 8-10). This helps to improve and understand how the Canvas element is interacted with the web page. There are also some different web browsers such as Lynx, which is a text-based terminal web browser used for seeing how your site is experienced by visually impaired users. You can also use Explorer-canvas to get canvas support through Internet Explorer. To make it work, we must include below JavaScript snippet in our code

<!--[if IE]><script src = "canvas.js"></script><![endif]-->

Verification

Execute the following example to check if editor is working correctly or not

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
   <title>Check editor</title>
</head>
<body>
   <p>Hello viewers</p>
   <canvas id="canvas" width="300" height="150" style="border: 2px solid black;">
      This text is displayed if your browser does not support HTML5 Canvas or if JavaScript is disabled.
   </canvas>
</body>
</html>

If the editor creates a web page containing the string "Hello viewers" and a small hollow rectangle, the editor is installed correctly. If the webpage does not render anything installation is not done correctly. The text available inside the Canvas tag is displayed only when the web browser does not support the Canvas element. You need to update your browser or install one which supports the Canvas element.