Lucid Digital Media

Believe it or not there is now an easy way to do vector graphics in browser without resorting to the use of Flash. Recently a new javascript library called Raphael came to forefront and is starting to make waves. Raphael essentially allows the developer to draw vector shapes, paths and text directly in the browser and manipulate them using javascript.

Raphael allows you to attach DOM events to the objects you create and treat them like standard DOM elements.  It supports basic transitions and translations for all elements allowing you to perform some fairly impressive animations, you can even perform something not unlike a flash shape tween.  Given these features it entirely possible to build a complex application, which is exactly what we've done!

Raphael is well documented and works across Firefox, Safari and IE6/7/8.  You can find more information at the official Raphael website.

We think that as technologies like this start to mature within the browser, we'll soon see the need for third party runtimes like Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight reduce and even disappear for Rich Internet Applications.