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Did you know that you have a choice in how you can get things to display in your browser? Well...you do! The most common approach for getting content to display on your screen is by working with DOM elements. This is where you (and 99% of the entire world) create HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and have elements appear magically. The other approach uses the canvas element. With a canvas, you manually specify exactly what you want drawn and displayed on your screen. Both of these approaches have their uses. For the kinds of visually complex applications you will be creating, knowing when to use which is a good thing for you to be aware of.
To help you with this, let's take a step back. In fact, let's take many steps back and look at how our two approaches map to how your browser translates what you want into something that gets displayed. Core to this translation are two modes called Retained Mode and Immediate Mode. While it may not seem like it right now, understanding the details of both of these modes will help you know when to rely on the DOM APIs and when to use canvas to display visuals on the screen.
Onwards!
In a retained mode system, the way you get things to display on the screen is by sending your hopes, dreams, and desires to your browser's Graphics API. This API, much like Santa Claus, gives you whatever you ask for.
The following diagram roughly describes the division of labor between you, the Graphics API, and your browser:
The yellow box represents the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that makes up your application. While you may not have thought about your markup and code in quite this way, almost everything you specify is nothing more than a drawing instruction that tells your browser what to display on the screen.
This translation between your raw markup and code to something visual is handled by your browser's Graphics API. This API takes what you specify and creates an in-memory model (often referred to as a scene, object list or display list) of what the final output should look like. Once it creates this model, the final step is to translate the model into the arcane draw commands that your browser understands.
All of this happens very seamlessly behind the scenes. You simply define your application. The details of getting what you defined into something you can see is automatically handled for you.
Contrasting the gentle comforts of a retained mode system is the immediate mode one where...well, let's just look at the diagram first:
In an immediate mode system, you do all of the heavy lifting. You not only specify what needs to be drawn, you also create and maintain the model as well. As if all of this wasn't enough, you also specify the draw commands to get your browser to actually update! Your browser's Graphics API, the API that did so much for you in the retained mode world, doesn't do much here. It simply takes your draw commands and sends them off to the browser for execution.
In HTML, immediate mode comes into play when you are using the canvas element. Anything you wish to draw inside it requires you to issue primitive draw commands and handle all aspects of managing the scene and redrawing when changes happen.
Whenever a section heading promises a clear answer, you know that the answer is never clear. This time is no exception. Choosing between the immediate mode-ness of the canvas and the retained mode-ness of your DOM is not an exclusive decision. It can actually be quite scandalous! You can choose just one, the other, or even both.
In this section, let's build on the overview you saw in the previous section and look at the advantages and disadvantages of each of the approaches.
Since we are talking about the DOM here, you will spend a majority of the time, possibly even all of your time, in this retained mode world. Despite the comforts it provides, it isn't perfect.
Let's look at its perfections and imperfections in more detail:
If this were a popularity contest, I would feel pretty bad for immediate mode and the canvas element that uses it. Fortunately, it isn't! Immediate mode systems certainly carry their own weight - even in the more limited cases they are used in.
Let's look at some of their cool (and less cool) features in more detail:
Understanding the retained mode and immediate mode differences makes it much easier to sympathize with the DOM on certain things and with the canvas on others. By now, hopefully you have a good idea of when to use one over the other. In case it helps, here is my short list on when I use canvas and when I use the DOM.
This is pretty simple. I use the DOM for everything else that I don't use a canvas for. The canvas has very limited uses for the kinds of things that I do.
To see more examples and materials that indirectly utilize everything you've learned here, check out the following articles written by me and others:
Just a final word before we wrap up. If you have a question and/or want to be part of a friendly, collaborative community of over 220k other developers like yourself, post on the forums for a quick response!
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