I'm just curious if there are any plans to use HTML5 <canvas> elements as an option in layers.
I am exploring creating a custom "feature layer" using a <canvas> overlaid on the map because in my admittedly informal testing it seems much faster for drawing lots of small marker-type images (i.e., a couple of thousand), compared to doing them in a Graphics layer. Complications of this "outside the toolkit" approach include layer stacking (always on top is all I need, but...) and proper mouse event handling (i.e., routing events not handled by the <canvas> layer to the underlying map layers).
Obviously this would require HTML5 browsers, which doesn't include IE 7/8 without use of far slower compatibility add-on libraries, but still it seems like a nice option to have in the toolkit - i.e., if the toolkit could use <canvas> rather than svg optionally for the whole stack of layers.
Are there any plans or tentative plans or experiments in this direction?
Rex Bradford
Direct Relief International