Question

I’m creating a web app that allows users to enter a number of colors, by specifying RGB values. Upon submission, the user will see a canvas with a solid rectangle drawn in the color chosen.

On this page, I have 7 canvases. The first one draws just fine, but none of the rest show up. The browser is Safari. Here’s the relevant code:

First, the script element in the header, which defines the function I use to draw to the canvas.

<script language="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript"><!--
function drawCanvas(canvasId, red, green, blue) {
var theCanvas = document.getElementById("canvas" + canvasId);

     var context = theCanvas.getContext("2d");

     context.clearRect(0,0,100,100);
     context.setFillColor(red,green,blue,1.0);
     context.fillRect(0,0,100,100);
    }
    // -->
    </script>

Next, the HTML source, where I have my canvas tags and some embedded Javascript to call my drawCanvas function

<canvas id="canvas0" width="100" height="100">
  </canvas>


   <script language="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript"><!--
 drawCanvas(0,250,0,0);
   // -->
 </script>
.
. //more source
.
<canvas id="canvas1" width="100" height="100">
  </canvas>


   <script language="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript"><!--
 drawCanvas(1,4,250,6);
   // -->
 </script>

Also provided is a screenshot. As you can see, the “red” canvas comes up just fine, but the second one, which should be green, doesn’t show up at all. Any ideas?

Answer 1

There is some strangeness with the way setFillColor is interpreting the color values — change the second call to drawCanvas(1,0,250,0) (instead of 4, 250, 6 for the last three args) and the green canvas shows just fine (on showing a local HTML file — @Chetan’s suggestion is worthwhile for pages that don’t load that fast, but it doesn’t solve your problem;-). This occurs in both Safari and Chrome. Unfortunately I cannot find a documentation for setFillColor (the coming HTML5 standard uses a different approach and does not appear to define such a method) so I can’t check whether that’s a webkit bug (webkit being what both Safari and Chrome are using for rendering) or a difference in what args setFillColor wants!

Edit: I experimented a bit and it seems it wants the RGB component in the range 0.0 to 1.0, not 0 to 255. Changing the call to setFillColor to:

 context.setFillColor(red/256,green/256,blue/256,1.0);

therefore appears to work just fine.