Question

I’ve found mixed evidence about whether it’s feasible to create a dynamic background with the HTML5 canvas element. Here’s a guy who seems to have successfully done it:

http://radikalfx.com/files/anibg/

I have successfully positioned my canvas element as a background, but it has rendered my links unclickable. Here’s the situation:

HTML:

<div id='container'>

... other header stuff ...
   <canvas id='background'>
   </canvas>

   <!-- Can't touch this *MC Hammer Shuffle* -->
   <a href='#'>test</a>
... footer stuff ...

</div>

CSS:

/* Everything's z-index is now 1 */
#container
{
position: relative;
min-height:100%;
width:100%;
z-index:1; 
}

/* Make the canvas z-index 0 */
#background
{
position: absolute;
top: 0;
width:100%;
height:100%;
z-index: 0;
}

JavaScript:

 // Onload Draw an ellipse
// I've got jCanvas installed (jQuery plugin) to use the drawArc() method
// This bit can be replaced with whatever test code you want. 
function load()
{
init_canvas();
$("canvas").drawArc({
        fillStyle: "black",
         x: 100, y: 100,
          radius: 50
    });
}

// Make the canvas the appropriate size
function init_canvas()
{
canvas = document.getElementById("background");
    canvas.width = document.width;
    canvas.height = document.height;
    canvasW = canvas.width;
    canvasH = canvas.height;
}

Cheers!

Answer 1

You use #container in your CSS to give everything else a z-index of 1, yet you never put an element #container on the page.

Change your HTML to the following and it will work as expected:

<canvas id='background'></canvas>
<div id="container">
    <a href='#'>test</a>
</div>

JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/ht6c8/