Monthly Archives: January, 2013

Introduction Canvas 2D contains a specification for adding a path object. The idea behind a path object is that you can use it as a ‘cache’ of drawing commands that can be sent to the canvas context in a single command. In addition, the path object contains methods for aggregating paths, stroking and converting text to... Continue reading →

Browsers render text without any ability to automatically balance text across lines. For example, when you have text spanning several lines, browsers render it something like this: Add 1 word at a time to the current line until no more words fit. Break text at that point and add the next word to a new... Continue reading →

What are winding rules? Paths are a very basic building block of any graphics library. Every time you draw a path, your browser needs to determine if a point on the canvas falls inside the enclosed curve. When the path is a simple circle or rectangle, this is obvious but when the path intersects itself... Continue reading →

While working on adding CSS blending to the web platform, we noticed that this feature is also missing in Canvas 2D. Since blending is such a commonly used feature in our applications, it is very useful in Canvas as well. Also since Canvas 2D lives so close to the underlying graphics libraries, it becomes easier... Continue reading →

As the CSS Exclusions feature is being implemented, curious challenges come up from time to time. In his latest blog post, Hans Muller describes how the first fit algorithm tackles polygons that have reflex vertices. Be sure to check out the awesome interactive demo in Hans’ post that demonstrates the problem and solution. Continue reading →

In this post I would like to give a short overview of WebKit’s performance and memory testing framework. Along with a bunch of WebKit geeks, I have been involved in the development process for a while, mostly from the side of contributions to memory-measurement. If I were to summarize the evolution of performance tests in... Continue reading →

I am a newcomer to the world of WebKit. Before starting here at Adobe I had never even looked at the source code, so I had quite a bit of learning to do once I started. I’ve done a few things in WebKit since then, but I’m definitely still in the early stages – it... Continue reading →

Our team has been committed to making web standards as accessible as possible to web developers. We organized the first Test the Web Forward event (there is one in Sydney on Feb 8-9, do register if you can participate!) & we will be hosting the second W3Conf on 21-22 February 2013 at The Regency Center,... Continue reading →

The explosion of devices and screen sizes has had an interesting effect on how designers and developers use icons on the web. Used well, icons can pack a lot of information into a small amount of visual real estate. They can help UIs communicate efficiently. For example, consider The ‘conversation bubble’ icon is not only... Continue reading →

In December of 2012 I got a chance to speak at the Kings of Code conference in Amsterdam about digital publishing on the web. My talk touched a bit on the current state of digital publishing for devices and how it got to this point. The bulk of the talk covered the pros and cons... Continue reading →