Announcing React-RETINA (<canvas> for React v15 & also Preact compatible, and supports variable sized ListView)

[xphung]

This library is an alternative Canvas implementation for React v15 (which react-canvas has not yet been updated to use). It is also compatible with Preact.

https://github.com/xphung/react-retina

Features:

1. Gallery component supports variable sized pages (whereas react-canvas ListView is limited to fixed size pages)
2. React-RETINA only uses standard/public React APIs.
3. The React Retina design avoids numerous React v15 anti-patterns (which React Canvas/React ART are guilty of using). There are no mixins, string Refs, or even Contexts. It does not use non standard lifecycle methods.
4. The React RETINA component library source code is much easier to understand as a result and is leaner and cleaner.
5. The View base component is extremely lightweight and specialised components (Image, Text, etc) are built on top of View via a custom draw callback. This is very flexible and allows virtually any drawable shape or component to be built on top of View.
6. The React RETINA Backing Store implementation is simpler and cleaner to use - instead of requiring specialised hooks/lifecycle to manage invalidation and repaints, just assign a unique ID to the useBackingStore property to make the View the cache a repaint. Simply assign a new ID whenever an invalidation and repaint into Backing Store is required ... no need for a special Javascript calls or API to invalidate cache data!
7. Keyboard events are supported!!

[fredguest]

@xphung is this meant to be a production ready alternative to react-canvas, and if so do you plan to add documentation and an installable npm package?

[xphung]

Hi fredguest,
React-RETINA is the more lightweight & efficient (in terms of code size and simplicity) than React-Canvas. It also supports v15 of React whereas React-Canvas is still limited obsolete versions. The tight code base is much easier to test, understand, debug and modify and in fact, my preference is users directly read the source code instead of relying on too much documentation.

My target & testing for it has been Chrome and OS X WKWebKit only, and it makes no attempt whatsoever to support quirky older browsers, and there are no production-ready guarantees. On browsers that do support React-RETINA, my testing to date indicates it is higher performance than React-Canvas, as React-RETINA intentionally leaves out some costly features like arbitrary Z-indexes and text metrics.

For example, to support arbitrary z-indices, React-Canvas creates an array, reverses it, and sorts it ... it does this repeatedly for every single layer (including all child layers in the sub-tree) for all non-cached Canvas redraws. There may be hundreds of child-layers (eg. every single text and image component has it's own layer). My approach instead has been to traverse the layer tree in 'vDOM' order, and fix the z-depth to child > parent & nth child > nth-1 child. Given 'vDOM' order is arbitrary and x/y/width/height of any layer can be set to overlap as much or as little as any other layer, there is very little additional flexibility to be gained by the arbitary z-index approach of React-Canvas.

The other example is it's support for Preact, which at approx ~10KB is a higher performance and faster loading alternative to React v15.... I hope these examples shows why I believe there is a place for a tighter, lightweight approach than that taken in React-Canvas + React.

[fredguest]

It sounds very interesting, I'd like to try it out but it's a bit messy to import at the moment. Are you planning to publish it to https://www.npmjs.com/ so people can simply npm install react-retina?

[xphung]

My priority at this stage is getting v1.1 out, before publishing it more widely
Will keep you posted on when v1.1 is out and may consider packaging it to npm then...

[xphung]

Currently, v1.0 is available as a "traditional" <script src='...'> library, located at "js/react-retina.js". This file is a browser-ready build of the React-RETINA code which can be incorporated into scripts the old fashioned way (via the Retina global variable, which provides access to the various components of the library, ie: Retina.View, Retina.Text, Retina.Image, Retina.Surface, Retina.Gallery, etc). You will also find convenient built files for the dependencies at js/react.js, js/react-dom.js and js/redux.js .... have a look at the demo.html to see how these are all put together via <script> tags.

[fredguest]

Ok cool sounds good. Looking forward to trying it out!

[kungfoolabs]

Interested in using it, but haven't seen any updates since initial commit or an npm package (which is kinda of a must). Are we gonna see more development?

[xphung]

Hi Kungfoolabs, an NPM package isn't my priority right now. I'm working on v1.1 release first, which will feature major improvements to the Gallery component (essentially breaking it down into a series of separate components). NPM packaging will be considered after v1.1 has been done.

[kungfoolabs]

@xphung Thanks.
Ya, I understand your priorities. Seems like ours don't align. Would love to see a native react extensible canvas framework. Without adoption & support, it'll be unlikely to be used and kind of in the deadpool. I'll look into getting something setup.

[turnerniles]

@xphung any estimate release date on v1.1? I would also be interested in an npm package.

[xphung]

Hi turnerniles, v1.1 will be about improving the Gallery component (restructuring it into a collection of several smaller components), and is a few mths away.

[SalahAdDin]

@xphung Are you still working in it?

[dolebas]

@xphung Impressed and intrigued by the concept of React-RETINA as well as react-canvas. Do you know of any sites using this lib in production yet?