How do I fix blurry text in my HTML5 canvas?

Question

I am a total n00b with HTML5 and am working with the canvas to render shapes, colors, and text. In my app, I have a view adapter that creates a canvas dynamically, and fills it with content. This works really nicely, except that my text is rendered very fuzzy/blurry/stretched. I have seen a lot of other posts on why defining the width and height in CSS will cause this issue, but I define it all in javascript.

The relevant code (view Fiddle):

HTML

<div id="layout-content"></div>

Javascript

var width = 500;//FIXME:size.w;
var height = 500;//FIXME:size.h;

var canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
//canvas.className="singleUserCanvas";
canvas.width=width;
canvas.height=height;
canvas.border = "3px solid #999999";
canvas.bgcolor = "#999999";
canvas.margin = "(0, 2%, 0, 2%)";

var context = canvas.getContext("2d");

//////////////////
////  SHAPES  ////
//////////////////

var left = 0;

//draw zone 1 rect
context.fillStyle = "#8bacbe";
context.fillRect(0, (canvas.height*5/6)+1, canvas.width*1.5/8.5, canvas.height*1/6);

left = left + canvas.width*1.5/8.5;

//draw zone 2 rect
context.fillStyle = "#ffe381";
context.fillRect(left+1, (canvas.height*5/6)+1, canvas.width*2.75/8.5, canvas.height*1/6);

left = left + canvas.width*2.75/8.5 + 1;

//draw zone 3 rect
context.fillStyle = "#fbbd36";
context.fillRect(left+1, (canvas.height*5/6)+1, canvas.width*1.25/8.5, canvas.height*1/6);

left = left + canvas.width*1.25/8.5;

//draw target zone rect
context.fillStyle = "#004880";
context.fillRect(left+1, (canvas.height*5/6)+1, canvas.width*0.25/8.5, canvas.height*1/6);

left = left + canvas.width*0.25/8.5;

//draw zone 4 rect
context.fillStyle = "#f8961d";
context.fillRect(left+1, (canvas.height*5/6)+1, canvas.width*1.25/8.5, canvas.height*1/6);

left = left + canvas.width*1.25/8.5 + 1;

//draw zone 5 rect
context.fillStyle = "#8a1002";
context.fillRect(left+1, (canvas.height*5/6)+1, canvas.width-left, canvas.height*1/6);

////////////////
////  TEXT  ////
////////////////

//user name
context.fillStyle = "black";
context.font = "bold 18px sans-serif";
context.textAlign = 'right';
context.fillText("User Name", canvas.width, canvas.height*.05);

//AT:
context.font = "bold 12px sans-serif";
context.fillText("AT: 140", canvas.width, canvas.height*.1);

//AB:
context.fillText("AB: 94", canvas.width, canvas.height*.15);

//this part is done after the callback from the view adapter, but is relevant here to add the view back into the layout.
var parent = document.getElementById("layout-content");
parent.appendChild(canvas);

The results I am seeing (in Safari) are much more skewed than shown in the Fiddle:

Mine

Fiddle

What am I doing incorrectly? Do I need a separate canvas for each text element? Is it the font? Am I required to first define the canvas in the HTML5 layout? Is there a typo? I am lost.

Answer 1

Solved!

I decided to see what changing the width and height attributes I set in javascript to see how that affected the canvas size -- and it didn't. It changes the resolution.

To get the result I wanted, I also had to set the canvas.style.width attribute, which changes the physical size of the canvas:

canvas.width=1000;//horizontal resolution (?) - increase for better looking text
canvas.height=500;//vertical resolution (?) - increase for better looking text
canvas.style.width=width;//actual width of canvas
canvas.style.height=height;//actual height of canvas

Answer 2

The canvas element runs independent from the device or monitor's pixel ratio.

On the iPad 3+, this ratio is 2. This essentially means that your 1000px width canvas would now need to fill 2000px to match it's stated width on the iPad display. Fortunately for us, this is done automatically by the browser. On the other hand, this is also the reason why you see less definition on images and canvas elements that were made to directly fit their visible area. Because your canvas only knows how to fill 1000px but is asked to draw to 2000px, the browser must now intelligently fill in the blanks between pixels to display the element at its proper size.

I would highly recommend you read this article from HTML5Rocks which explains in more detail how to create high definition elements.

tl;dr? Here is an example (based on the above tut) that I use in my own projects to spit out a canvas with the proper resolution:

var PIXEL_RATIO = (function () {
    var ctx = document.createElement("canvas").getContext("2d"),
        dpr = window.devicePixelRatio || 1,
        bsr = ctx.webkitBackingStorePixelRatio ||
              ctx.mozBackingStorePixelRatio ||
              ctx.msBackingStorePixelRatio ||
              ctx.oBackingStorePixelRatio ||
              ctx.backingStorePixelRatio || 1;

    return dpr / bsr;
})();


createHiDPICanvas = function(w, h, ratio) {
    if (!ratio) { ratio = PIXEL_RATIO; }
    var can = document.createElement("canvas");
    can.width = w * ratio;
    can.height = h * ratio;
    can.style.width = w + "px";
    can.style.height = h + "px";
    can.getContext("2d").setTransform(ratio, 0, 0, ratio, 0, 0);
    return can;
}

//Create canvas with the device resolution.
var myCanvas = createHiDPICanvas(500, 250);

//Create canvas with a custom resolution.
var myCustomCanvas = createHiDPICanvas(500, 200, 4);

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

I slightly adapted the MyNameIsKo code under canvg (SVG to Canvas js library). I was confused for a while and spend some time for this. Hope this help someone.

HTML

<div id="chart"><canvas></canvas><svg>Your SVG here</svg></div>

Javascript

window.onload = function() {

var PIXEL_RATIO = (function () {
    var ctx = document.createElement("canvas").getContext("2d"),
        dpr = window.devicePixelRatio || 1,
        bsr = ctx.webkitBackingStorePixelRatio ||
              ctx.mozBackingStorePixelRatio ||
              ctx.msBackingStorePixelRatio ||
              ctx.oBackingStorePixelRatio ||
              ctx.backingStorePixelRatio || 1;

    return dpr / bsr;
})();

setHiDPICanvas = function(canvas, w, h, ratio) {
    if (!ratio) { ratio = PIXEL_RATIO; }
    var can = canvas;
    can.width = w * ratio;
    can.height = h * ratio;
    can.style.width = w + "px";
    can.style.height = h + "px";
    can.getContext("2d").setTransform(ratio, 0, 0, ratio, 0, 0);
}

var svg = document.querySelector('#chart svg'),
    canvas = document.querySelector('#chart canvas');

var svgSize = svg.getBoundingClientRect();
var w = svgSize.width, h = svgSize.height;
setHiDPICanvas(canvas, w, h);

var svgString = (new XMLSerializer).serializeToString(svg);
var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
ctx.drawSvg(svgString, 0, 0, w, h);

}

Answer 4

This 100% solved it for me:

var canvas = document.getElementById('canvas');
canvas.width = canvas.getBoundingClientRect().width;
canvas.height = canvas.getBoundingClientRect().height;

(it is close to Adam Mańkowski's solution).

Answer 5

For those of you working in reactjs, I adapted MyNameIsKo's answer and it works great. Here is the code.

import React from 'react'

export default class CanvasComponent extends React.Component {
    constructor(props) {
        this.calcRatio = this.calcRatio.bind(this);
    } 

    // Use componentDidMount to draw on the canvas
    componentDidMount() {  
        this.updateChart();
    }

    calcRatio() {
        let ctx = document.createElement("canvas").getContext("2d"),
        dpr = window.devicePixelRatio || 1,
        bsr = ctx.webkitBackingStorePixelRatio ||
          ctx.mozBackingStorePixelRatio ||
          ctx.msBackingStorePixelRatio ||
          ctx.oBackingStorePixelRatio ||
          ctx.backingStorePixelRatio || 1;
        return dpr / bsr;
    }

    // Draw on the canvas
    updateChart() {

        // Adjust resolution
        const ratio = this.calcRatio();
        this.canvas.width = this.props.width * ratio;
        this.canvas.height = this.props.height * ratio;
        this.canvas.style.width = this.props.width + "px";
        this.canvas.style.height = this.props.height + "px";
        this.canvas.getContext("2d").setTransform(ratio, 0, 0, ratio, 0, 0);
        const ctx = this.canvas.getContext('2d');

       // now use ctx to draw on the canvas
    }


    render() {
        return (
            <canvas ref={el=>this.canvas=el} width={this.props.width} height {this.props.height}/>
        )
    }
}

In this example, I pass in the width and height of the canvas as props.

Answer 6

I resize canvas element via css to take whole width of parent element. I noticed that width and height of my element is not scaled. I was looking for best way to set size which should be.

canvas.width = canvas.clientWidth;
canvas.height = canvas.clientHeight;

This simple way your canvas will be set perfectly, no matter what screen you will use.