Canvas from html5 was introduced some time ago. Currently it’s used (almost) only for demonstrations how cool it is – it’s mainly related to painting, games and charts. Many of them can be found at Canvas demos.
How creatively / unusually can canvas be used?
Some examples:
- jsAscii – ASCII art from images with
Javascript and Canvas (yea, I
know, it’s painting but not the
classic one) - Javascript compression using PNG and
Canvas
There’s a really cool tool called Detexify which uses machine learning on the back end which allows you to draw the LaTeX symbol you’re interested in knowing the LaTeX code of and it will suggest one for you based on what it’s learned from other users.