technical-ui-implementation

Use Canvas when rendering thousands of objects at 60FPS, such as game worlds, particle systems, or real-time data visualizations. Use DOM for functional UIs like menus, forms, and inventories where native accessibility, event handling, and crisp text matter.

Rive is better for interactive animations because its state machines embed visual logic directly in the animation, reacting to runtime variables without complex code. Rive files are also smaller and render vector graphics in real time, using less CPU than Lottie or video.

Yes, the recommended hybrid approach layers Canvas or WebGL for the game rendering underneath a DOM/HTML overlay for the UI. This combines Canvas rendering performance with DOM accessibility and sharp text rendering.

Slow DOM animations usually come from animating properties like top or left that trigger layout reflow and repaints. Animate transform and opacity instead for GPU-accelerated compositing, or move intensive rendering to Canvas.

Canvas text can appear blurry when scaled because it is rasterized as pixels rather than rendered by the browser's text engine. The fix is moving text to a superimposed DOM layer above the Canvas for native sharp rendering.

Canvas has no native accessibility for screen readers, no built-in mouse events so you must calculate coordinates manually, and text can blur when scaled. These make it unsuitable for form-heavy or accessibility-critical interfaces.