Josh On Design

I mentioned a few days ago that I updated my Canvas Deep Dive ebook and dropped the price to free. But wait, there's more! I've also completely open sourced the book. My goal with Deep Dive was always to disseminate information as widely as possible. There is no better way to do that than giving it to the world.

The source to the book is now on GitHub here. I've created a separate repo for the example code here. The compiled web version of the book is here.

There are several reasons I think Canvas Deep Dive is different than the other canvas resources out there. First, it is comprehensive. Starting from chapter one the reader learns what canvas is, how it works, and the basic functions for drawing shapes. From there it moves on through charts, animation, pixel manipulation, WebGL with ThreeJS, WebAudio and finally a quick introduction to the experimental webcam API. Along the way the reader is walked through hands on exercises that ensure they understand the concepts.

Second: the book is interactive. Any text in a gray box has a glossary definition. The first chapter shows off interactive code snippets. Any number in red text can be dragged to change the value and the graphics are redrawn so the reader will directly see how this code changes the output. The hands on labs have inline demos so you can compare your code with the expected result.

Now that the source to the book is out there I need your help to make it better. Any contributions are welcome, from correcting spelling mistakes to writing new chapters. When the changes are committed the entire book will be rebuilt by my Hudson server here. Periodically I will be uploading new versions of the book as app to the iPad and TouchPad app stores. I'd also like help supporting Android tablets (I'm not much of an Android developer, I'm afraid). All pull requests are welcome.

Together we can make this the best way to learn HTML Canvas.

Thanks.