Google Docs is one of the best online word processing applications available right now.
The word processing application is now updating the way it renders the documents.
Currently, Google Docs is using the HTML-based rendering approach.
In a recent blog post, the company has revealed, Google Docs is going to use Canvas-based rendering.
The timeline of moving towards Canvas-based rendering from HTML-based rendering is till the end of this year.
Before moving further, let me explain to you, what is HTML-based rendering, what is Canvas-based rendering, and How Canvas-based rendering is better than HTML-based rendering.
What is HTML-based rendering?
In HTML-based rendering, when a browser loads a web page, it first reads the HTML text and then constructs a DOM tree of it.
Then, it reads the CSS of the web page and constructs the CSSOM Tree of it.
Once the browser completes constructing the DOM tree and CSSOM Tree, then it combines these two to create the Render Tree.
At last, by reading the Render Tree, the browser starts printing the elements of the web page on our computer screen.
So, this is How HTML-based rendering is done.
What is Canvas-based Rendering?
In addition to having the HTML-based rendering capabilities, the Canvas-based Rendering is used to draw shapes, text, images, and other objects.
Hence, with Canvas-based rendering, we may see Google Docs to let us draw better shapes, images, and other objects in future.
It might be the reason why Google Docs is going to use Canvas-based rendering.
How Canvas-based rendering is better than HTML-based rendering?
As I said above, the Canvas-based rendering is used to draw shapes, images, and other docs, it is more powerful than the HTML-based rendering.
Also, Google said that the Canvas-based rendering improves the performance and consistency of a content to how it appears on different platforms.
Canvas-based Rendering might affect some Chrome extensions
Google has said that the Canvas-based rendering approach in Google Docs might affect some Chrome extensions not to work as intended.
Do note that some developers have designed their Chrome extensions by following the HTML-based rendering approach of Google Docs.
Now, as the Google Docs is depreciating the HTML-based rendering approach, some Chrome extensions might not work as the way it was intended to do so.
To test whether your Chrome extension is working properly with the Google Docs new Canvas-based rendering approach, Google Docs team has created a document based on Canvas-based rendering.
One can open this document in the browser to check whether their Chrome extension is working properly with the Canvas-based rendering or not.
Google Docs team has also shared the Google Workspace Add-ons Framework and asked the developers to build their integration using this framework in order to have less work in future.
Google Docs teams also have asked the developers, if any of their extensions can be migrated to the Google Workspace Add-ons framework, then they can submit a form to provide feedback and notify the Google Docs team.