CANVAS

Until recently drawing pictures in a normal web browser without the help of extra software was difficult. Now, in the latest version of HTML - the code that makes up a web page - there is Canvas. It means you can draw whatever you like, even the type of dynamically rendered 3D graphics you would see in a computer game.

In this Web Lab experiment, a picture is taken of your face. This is captured on a webcam and via Canvas, the image is turned into a line drawing. This becomes a series of instructions that the Sketchbot can then draw.

Your computer has to work hard to make this to happen. Chrome makes the job easier by using a technology called Web Workers. Web Workers are small programs that run in the browser but not in the current page. This stops the current page from locking up, becoming unresponsive, and even crashing when it is required to do a lot of work.