Filed under: Microsoft, Browsers
Internet Explorer 9 to support hardware acceleration of HTML5 canvas tag
It's already been pretty widely reported that Internet Explorer 9 will feature better support for standards -- including HTML5. We also know it's going to take advantage of your GPU via Direct2D and DirectWrite. Now, a blog post from the folks at AMD has revealed the IE9 will support Direct2D hardware acceleration for the <canvas> element.
Here's what AMD's Robin Maffeo had to say:
Here's what AMD's Robin Maffeo had to say:
"The MSHTML rendering layer has been enhanced to use Direct2D and DirectWrite instead of GDI. Direct2D enables GPU accelerated 2D graphics and text, and allows sub-pixel positioning. In addition, the GPU is used for scaling (bitmaps are mapped to textures), which is ideal for zooming and moving images around the screen. This GPU support translates directly into improved readability of pages, more precise placement of text and images, and smooth scrolling and zooming.That's great news if it's accurate, since <canvas> enables all kinds of graphical goodness -- everything from that 2D jigsaw puzzle you see above to more complex gaming graphics rendered on-the-fly. As Maffeo puts it, "more fully utilizing the underlying hardware platform allows the development of rich graphical interactions (using HTML5 and JavaScript) that were not previously feasible."
[...]The <canvas> element will be accelerated on the GPU via Direct2D and will enable hardware accelerated rendering contexts for application development, improving visual display, reducing CPU usage, and improving power usage."
If you enjoy the ongoing browser war, brace yourself for an exciting 2010.
Chromatic is one of the best time-wasters I've recently come across. It's all about the gameplay -- no Flash graphics here. You play a "circle" (it doesn't really have a name in the game). You move around with the arrow keys, and you change colors with Z, X, and C.
You can either be red, blue, or yellow, and you can switch at any time during the game. Each color has different capabilities -- yellow can double-jump, while red has a longer dash (which is like a forward sprint, activated by double-pressing DOWN).
Each ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Aemony said 4:19PM on 3-19-2010
Wasn't this already included in the public Internet Explorer 9 Developers Preview? At least it seemed that way when I played around with it.
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Lee Mathews said 4:20PM on 3-19-2010
None of the canvas demos I tried worked (including the jigsaw puzzle above)