I have an image and move it around my web page (JavaScript) like this:
satelliteImage.style.top = coordinates.top + "px";
satelliteImage.style.left = coordinates.left + "px";
Unfortunately, the performance is quite bad in all browsers except Chrome. The bottleneck is rendering speed. I have no hope for IE, but I want to improve Firefox at least. Does anyone have experience with performance of HTML5 Canvas while moving an image, compared to Style change?
I have created equivalent tests to compare frame rates for moving an image via CSS versus drawing it on an HTML canvas. Here are the tests:
- Moving an Image via Canvas
- Moving an Image via CSS
- Moving 20 Sprites via Canvas over a 1024x768 background
- Moving 20 Sprites via CSS over a 1024x768 background
And here are the FPS results (see URL for test details):
Image Image Sprite Sprite
Browser Canvas CSS Canvas CSS
----------------------------------------------
Safari v5.0.3 59 95 59 89
Firefox v3.6.13 59 95 60 90
Firefox v4.0b8 75 89 78 82
Chrome v8.0 108 230 120 204
iPad, Horiz 17 44 2 14
iPad, Vert 4 75 2 15
As you can see:
- You're always going to get better results moving an image as an HTML element than redrawing a portion of the canvas, and
- You're
likely possibly doing something wrong if you're only getting 5fps.
Edit: Added tests for moving 20 small animated sprites over a background. The conclusions remain the same.
It's now been over 2 years and I decided to run these tests to see if this still holds true. It does...and it doesn't.
Firefox Desktop and mobile both run CSS animations significantly faster than canvas.
Chrome desktop runs canvas and CSS animations about the same
Chrome Mobile (on Nexus 7) does the exact opposite: canvas runs significantly faster than CSS!
(Using Firefox Android with Nexus 7 and desktop browsers on Linux with 1920x1080 resolution)
Browser/OS Canvas Image CSS IMage Canvas Sprites CSS Sprites
----------- ------------ ---------- -------------- -----------
Firefox 16 56.7fps 215.6 fps 59.2fps 203.6fps
Firefox 16 Android 17.1 fps 179.6fps 11.5fps 35.7
Chrome 22 192.3fps 223.5fps 170.1fps 164.3fps
Chrome Android 48.3fps 39.9fps 92.8fps 13.1fps
What does everyone else get? Can anyone test IE9, 10 for this?
Figured I'd update this old question with my findings on a 3rd generation iPad:
Canvas wins 2:1 with the sprite animations an average of about 120 fps with background clearing toggled both ways. CSS could barely meet 60 fps.
As for the single image, CSS was definitely quicker.
In my experience with Canvas you should be able to get a good 50 fps on Firefox and even a good 15 fps on iOS. IE9 will probably be the fastest browser, other versions don't really implement Canvas.
Further to MyNameIsKo findings on iPad 3 performance. I was wondering if it was to do with the fact that the CSS DOM method had to worry about drawing on the retina screen of iPad 3 whereas the canvas would be drawn to at lower resolution and then blt'd to screen. An iPad 1 is significantly faster for CSS updates than the iPad3!
I also made some changes to the canvas javascript to be able to draw to a retina resolution canvas. I added the following code after canv.height = h; in the bg.onload function:
if (window.devicePixelRatio) {
ctx.canvas.style.width = w + "px";
ctx.canvas.style.height = h + "px";
ctx.canvas.height = h * window.devicePixelRatio;
ctx.canvas.width = w * window.devicePixelRatio;
ctx.scale(window.devicePixelRatio, window.devicePixelRatio);
}
which made a huge reduction in performance...
iPad 1 (iOS 5.5.1)
iPad 3 (iOS 6.1.3)
CSS Sprite Canvas Sprites
-----------------------------------------------------
iPad 1 90 100
iPad 3 55 120
iPad 1(canvas changes) n/a 100
iPad 3(canvas changes) n/a 35