Canvas and HTML5: Supported Browsers?

Question

I am looking at using HTML5 Canvas element for my upcoming project. I want to know what all major browsers (including the versions!, cos i know that the latest builds do support canvas) support the Canvas tag. I don't give a damn about IE. So don't bother reporting IE. :) In this tutorial Drawing shapes - MDC, the quadraticCurveTo section says:

quadraticCurveTo(cp1x, cp1y, x, y) // BROKEN in Firefox 1.5 (see work around below)

Does that mean that Canvas is supported on Firefox 1.5 and above too?

Solution 1

caniuse.com lists browser support for many different features, including canvas.

Specifically, browser support for canvas is listed at caniuse.com/#search=canvas.

Solution 2

It's not only about "supporting Canvas", but about the bugs that each implementation has about this and missing methods that have been added since the initial release. So even if one version of Firefox does add the basic Canvas support, it might have some bugs that make it impossible to use it in your application.

In that case, you might need to check the current versions and then go back as far as you want to support to verify if they work as expected.

Comments

[Shripad Krishna]

How does Google go about implementing HTML5 features in Google Wave and also provide support to almost all the browsers? For IE theres the Excanvas hack. What about the rest? i need something like a comparison chart where the comparison is based on not only browser support but also as you said about "missing methods"

[Shripad Krishna]

Yes i have come across that page before. When i checked working draft most of the browsers except for IE 6/7/8 are marked ready(only the basic support). I don't care about Text API for canvas right now. And if i use excanvas hack then it will provide basic support with IE too. Right?

[Warty]

@Paddy: An example of difference between implementations would be rendering text of 9pt font Lucida Console. Firefox will make the letters very close together while Chrome will make them spread out.

[AlfonsoML]

I guess that the have a set of tests that they can run on the supported browsers to verify that everything works as expected. Anyway, you have to keep in mind that except IE the users of other browsers are usually updated and you don't have to test in old browsers (and they might even be out of support by their manufactures)