With the introduction of HTML5 is the introduction of browser support for the <canvas> element. This is an important introduction because unlike the canvas in Flash and other non-HTML web application frameworks, the drawing here can be accomplished via javascript (or potentially another client side scripting language) and is based on the HTML event model.

I’ve whipped up a small demonstration of the canvas in action, which is a little pencil drawing application (left-click and drag). I don’t believe this will work in IE, but I’ll check later.

Unfortunately, as is evident in this more complicated textured demo, the speed for more complex rendering is horrible. However, because this is all early in the life-cycle, the rendering capabilities are bound to improve (and hopefully dramatically).

Why is the <canvas> element important?

It is important because it provides a standard, non-proprietary rendering platform that has been tantalizingly absent from browser rendering engines, so tantalizing in fact that the absence of such functionality spawned proprietary frameworks that were created to provide it (Flash, etc).

Who is working on all of this?

Initially, the WHATWG was created due to lack of movement from the W3C on a new version of HTML (not XHTML) suited for the future of web application development. The WHATWG created the working draft of the HTML5 specification, which was recently adpoted by the W3C HTML Working Group as the foundation for what will (probably) eventually become the standard version of HTML5, which will be implemented and supported by most browsers. To make a long story short, the right people are working on this.