Canvas MDN Short Survey proposal

[atopal]

This is a proposal for an MDN Short Survey for Canvas, based on the State of Graphics discussions.

Posted under https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Canvas_API and other associated canvas documentation, possibly also SVG

Survey Question 1

Purpose: Understanding the distribution of usage so that we know what areas to focus our investment on.

Question: What category would you say your use of canvas falls into? Check all that apply [checkbox options] :
Answer options:

1. Playing custom animations like Lottie or Rive
2. Charting & graphical information
3. Games
4. Creating an editor (ie photo editor or design tool)
5. Showing 3D models (outside of games)
6. Art
7. Other - please specify [short form field]
8. I’m not using canvas

Survey Question 2

Purpose: To get a signal of what the biggest weakness within the graphics space is based on the question 1

Question: How would you rate the ease of use of canvas for your use case? [Scale of 1-5]
Answer options: For each of the selected areas above

• Very difficult
• Difficult
• Neutral
• Easy
• Very Easy
  Recommend adding: “I’m not using Canvas” to all fields

Survey Question 3

Purpose: trying to dig into some specific priority questions we have in each of these areas

Use case category specific questions – will be shown if and only if Animations (answer 1 to question 1) is selected

Question a1: What animation format do you use[checkbox options]
Answer options:

• SVG
• Lottie, Rive,
• other [form field]

Question a2: Are there animations or specific animation features you cannot use effectively due to lack of performance or other reason (please specify)?
Answer options:

• [free form, short]

Question a3: If browsers supported the Lottie format natively (no need to ship a JS player), would you stop shipping a player and rely on browser support instead?
Answer options:

• Yes
• No
• Unsure

[tidoust]

Nice. Questions 1 and 2 seem good to me. Regarding question 3:

• a1: The list sort of surprises me as the first formats that come to my mind for short animations are animated GIF and PNG. That's the first ones I would attempt to use. Am I too old already?
• a3: The question seems to call for a "Yes" answer. Would you stop relying on a polyfill if it's not needed? Well, yes! Why would people choose "No"? I suspect you're trying to evaluate something else. What did I miss?

[atopal]

Re a1: I think this is more about animating things as part of a site, not dropping objects into the page that have been animated somewhere else

a3: yes, this might require more nuance as a free form response or adding the trade-offs into the question.

@ThomasTheDane can you comment on the above?

[ThomasTheDane]

Sorry for the delay -

• a1: great point I have added these two options to the doc version of this. Also Lottie and Rive should be different options which I think they are in the doc but not this post.
• a3: True - we really want to know if they'd go through the effort to update it and switch it out. I updated it to " would you invest the time to stop shipping the player approach and rely on browser support instead? ".
• I added an a4 question as well: "Question a4: if just one supported the Lottie format natively (no need to ship a JS player), would you invest the time to stop shipping the player approach for just that browser? "