Unterbahn » Blog Archive » SVG vs. Canvas

SVG vs. Canvas

Well, SVG doesn’t scale well to large numbers of objects, but Canvas doesn’t scale well to large screens:

Here are the results of the first fruitful experiment, which clearly shows that SVG performance degrades quickly (exponentially on Safari?) in the number of objects, but Canvas performance remains at a near-constant low. This makes sense, since Canvas is just a bitmap buffer, while SVG has to maintain additional references to each object that it renders. Also, though not pictured, note that performance in clearing an SVG element also decreases in the number of drawn objects.

Related Posts:

Tags: canvas, svg

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 6:32 am and is filed under Blog, cartagen, code. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “SVG vs. Canvas”

Unterbahn » Blog Archive » Comparison of SVG and Canvas in OpenLayers Says:
July 30th, 2010 at 2:07 am
[...] of course, it bears mentioning this earlier comparison I dug up some months ago, which focuses on SVG/Canvas different sized rendering areas and different [...]
SVG map sample and Canavas in OpenLayers « Geospatial Haiku Says:
November 13th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
[...] SVG vs Canvas comparison by Jeffrey Warren from : http://unterbahn.com/2009/08/svg-vs/ [...]

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This is Jeffrey Warren

I make maps, create open source science tools and software, and other stuff at the Pirateship in Somerville, MA, and as one of the founders of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. I am a fellow in MIT's Center for Civic Media. I'm on Github. Email me at jeff@unterbahn.com

The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science »

The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (PLOTS) is a community which develops and applies open-source tools to environmental exploration and investigation. By democratizing inexpensive and accessible "Do-It-Yourself" techniques, Public Laboratory creates a collaborative network of practitioners who actively re-imagine the human relationship with the environment.

GrassrootsMapping.org »

Tools and techniques for participatory grassroots mapping, emphasizing subjective and narrative mapping as a form of expression. By using low-cost tools like kites and balloons along with inexpensive digital cameras and mobile phones, communities can explore, document and assert their own local geographies. We are developing a map-making curriculum for kids and digital tools to publish grassroots maps in standard formats such as KML, Shapefile, and GeoJSON.

Cartagen.org »

Cartagen is a set of tools for mapping, enabling users to view and configure live streams of geographic data in a dynamic, personally relevant way. These tools helps users to analyze and view collected and shared geographic and temporal data from multiple sources. The framework uses vector-based, context-sensitive drawing methods to describe data, not merely in terms of lines and polygons, but also with adaptive use of color, movement, and projection. Applications include mapping real-time air pollution, citizen reporting, and disaster response.

NEWSFLOW »

NEWSFLOW is a dynamic, real-time map of news reporting, which displays both the latest top stories as well as the news organizations which covered them. All articles are from the last few minutes. Viewing news in this way lets us see how the choice of 'top stories' by news bureaus is geographically unequal, or rather, what areas of the world are neglected by various national news sources. Built with HTML5 on the dynamic mapping framework CARTAGEN, NEWSFLOW draws on real-time data from over 200 news organizations as well as Google, Yahoo, and other sources.

WHOOZ.org »

WHOOZ is a project to map urban wildlife in realtime with SMS messages throughout Manhattan, the Bronx, and Cambridge, MA. Users can request realtime 'safaris' to find animals recently seen near their current location.

ARMSFLOW.org »

ARMSFLOW is a data visualization which displays arms transactions globally between 1950 and 2006. It includes 14,619 arms transactions (each is a sum of 1 year's exports) and 228 government entities.

Kogbox.com »

Kogbox is a communal programming site where users write short re-usable snippets of code and run them in the cloud. Snippets can be shared and combined to create more complex applications.

Coffee Analytics »

A project mapping the flow of coffee on global, urban, local, architectural, biological, and personal scales. The full collection includes over 50 pieces on cardboard, paper, and chipboard in ink, paint, graphite, chalk, charcoal, and coffee.

Other work:

I was a partner at Vestal Design, where worked with Dave Pitman and Mike Lin on lots of stuff like Xobni's user interface and branding and information design for Intel, General Electric, and others. I also taught information design workshops for General Electric and Tata Consultancy Services in Mumbai.

I work occasionally and excitedly with Natalie Jeremijenko as part of her xDesign Lab at NYU.

Weardrobe is a site for tagging and organizing clothing online, which I created with Suzanne Xie and Richard Tong.

Cut&Paste Labs was founded by Diego Rotalde and me; we taught workshops on web design and development with open-source tools in Lima, Peru in 2006-7. Some of our students went on to found their own firms...

I've also designed a few zany things which people have enjoyed, like the DoubleSpace Kitchenette:

as well as the SHRIMP Refugee Shelter (with Alice B. Philips):