For years, web developers have had to make a tough architectural choice when building complex, highly-interactive visual applications on the web/ Should you lean on the DOM for its rich semantic features or render directly to the <canvas> element for low-level graphics performance?
With the new experimental HTML-in-Canvas API—available now in origin trial—you don't have to choose. This API lets you draw DOM content directly into a 2D canvas or a WebGL/WebGPU texture while keeping the UI interactable, accessible, and hooked up to your favorite browser features. By combining HTML with low-level graphics processing, you can create experiences that were previously impossible.
To understand the power of this new API, it helps to look at the relative strengths of both the DOM and the Canvas.
