Changes

Processing has a large and vibrant community, who are good at creating 2D and 3D graphics, visualizing data sets, audio, video, etc. With HTML5 the web gained canvas, audio, and video--things which had previously only been available via plugins like Flash or Java. At the same time, advances in JavaScript engines, have made it possible to do things in script that were previously unthinkabletoo slow.

By porting the Processing language to the web, both the Processing and web communities benefit. For Processing, this means that code which used to only work on the desktop now "just works" in the browser. For the web, this means that a new but mature and full-featured approach to graphics programming becomes available. The <canvas> element is too low-level for most developers to use directly--JavaScript libraries are necessary. Processing.js can be thought of as just such a library, simplifying the use of the 2D and 3D canvas operations.

The Processing language was designed to be small but complete, and easy to learn. Having said thatThis document does not attempt to teach you Processing, and you are encouraged to seek out Processing specific tutorials, it is  books, and examples. Any Processing code or concepts should map to Processing.processingjs (the exceptions are listed below).js is not really a general purpose JS canvas library--it is a port You can also use pure JavaScript to work with the Processing drawing API, skipping the Java syntax of Processingin favour of JavaScript.