maximize-canvas

Stretches canvas to the entire window proportionally. Avoids "black bars". Made for 2D mobile web games.

Installation

Via npm (recommended):

$ npm install maximize-canvas

Or grab pre-built library from lib directory (maximize_canvas is global there):

<script src="maximize_canvas.min.js">

How to use it?

 
var maximizeCanvas = require("maximize-canvas");
var canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
var canvasBinding = maximizeCanvas(
    canvas, {
        dimensions: {
            width: 640,
            height: {min: 712, max: 1136}              
        },
        onCanvasResized: function(width, height) {
           // Optional callback invoked, after canvas.width or canvas.height are changed
        }
    }
);

What's going on in the above code?

Let's say the game is portrait:

• Canvas width is fixed: 640 pixels
• Minimum height: 712 pixels (below that the gameplay would have been clipped)
• Maximum height: 1136 (because we don't want black bars, and our background art is 640x1136)

maximize-canvas call does the following:

• Appends canvas to window object
• Starts listening for window.resize event
• Keeps canvas width fixed, and adjusts height to match the device aspect ratio on each resize
• Scale canvas up with CSS to cover the entire screen

What if my game has fixed 960x640 resolution?

Just don't provide any options to maximizeCanvas and it will keep original canvas size. It will still append canvas to the window, and keep stretching it with CSS as window resizes.

However, "black bars" around canvas will appear if device aspect ratio does not match. We cannot do our magic if you don't allow us to change your canvas width or height!

```javascript
var maximizeCanvas = require("maximize-canvas");
var canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
canvas.width = 960; canvas.height = 640;
var canvasBinding = maximizeCanvas(canvas);
```

What if my game is landscape?

You can define any combination of fixed and range values for width and height.

var maximizeCanvas = require("maximize-canvas");
var canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
var canvasBinding = maximizeCanvas(
    canvas, {
        dimensions: {
            width: {min: 1024, max: 2048},
            height: 768  
        }
    }
);

Can we support both orientations?

Yes, best matching config will be picked automatically. You are guaranteed to have at least 640x750 or 850x640 canvas with the below config. This is useful if your game supports separate vertical and horizontal layouts.

var maximizeCanvas = require("maximize-canvas");
var canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
var canvasBinding = maximizeCanvas(
    canvas, {
        dimensions: [
            {
                width: 640, 
                height: {min: 750, max: 1200}
            },        
            {
                width: {min: 850, max: 1200}, 
                height: 640
            }
        ]
    });

Alternatively, you can configure it in a single config like below. This way you are guaranteed to have at least 640x700 canvas. It can grow vertically to 640x2048, and horizontally to 2048x700. This is useful if you have single layout, but ready to render optional background art around it.

var maximizeCanvas = require("maximize-canvas");
var canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
var canvasBinding = maximizeCanvas(
    canvas, {
        dimensions: {
            width: {min: 640, max: 2048}, 
            height: {min: 700, max: 2048}
        }
    }
);

My game engine breaks when canvas.width/canvas.height are changed externally

Some graphics/game engines (for example, PIXI) provide their own function to change canvas width/height properly.

Use resizeCanvas callback to provide your own render resize implementation.

var maximizeCanvas = require("maximize-canvas");
var renderer = PIXI.autoDetectRenderer({width: 640, height: 700});
var canvasBinding = maximizeCanvas(
    renderer.view, {
        dimensions: {
            width: {min: 640, max: 2048}, 
            height: {min: 700, max: 2048}
        },
        resizeCanvas: function(width, height) {
            renderer.resize(width, height);
        }
    }
);

Can we resize canvas inside its parent element, not add it to the window object?

This module is primarily meant for use in "full-screen canvas" games. Even with this very simple scenario things get buggy sometimes (see "duplicate canvas on older Android native browser"). For this reason maximize-canvas will stay focused on this trivial use case.

If your DOM tree is different, check out math/geometry modules behind maximize-canvas:

• aspect-to-rect - finding canvas.width and canvas.height by screen aspect ratio withing given ranges
• fit-rect - fit one rect (canvas) within another rect (screen), scaling it proportionally

Why another canvas "fit" module? Don't we have enough?

OK, all canvas scaling snippets I found do one of the following:

1. Fix canvas resolution (ex: 640x960), then scale canvas proportionally with CSS to fit the screen
2. Or set canvas.width/canvas.height to the size of the device window.

With option 1 you'll have "black bars" around canvas.

Option 2 is very flexible, but:

• You'll be drawing on a huge full-screen canvas - might be slow
• Your game will have to scale the sprites to any arbitrary resolution. Not every engine supports it, and in pre-WebGL world it is also slow.
• You are on your own with corner cases (very wide or very narrow game window, for example)