FabricJS VS Konva

FabricJS

Fabric.js is a powerful and simple Javascript HTML5 canvas library,

Konva

Konva is 2d Canvas JavaScript framework for drawings shapes, animations, node nesting, layering, filtering, event handling, drag and drop and much more.

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2023-09-20

Landing page //
2023-05-23

FabricJS

Website: fabricjs.com
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Konva

Website: konvajs.org
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FabricJS features and specs

Canvas Manipulation
FabricJS provides a powerful and easy-to-use API for canvas manipulation, allowing users to create, modify, and interact with complex canvas elements with ease.
Object Model
It offers a rich object model that includes shapes, images, and text elements that can be easily manipulated on the HTML5 canvas.
Cross-browser Compatibility
FabricJS is designed to work across all major modern browsers, ensuring consistent behavior and appearance of canvas applications.
Extensibility
Developers can extend FabricJS functionality by adding custom shapes, objects, and handlers, which allows for a tailored interaction experience.
Animation Support
The library includes built-in animation capabilities, which help create dynamic, engaging user interactions without needing additional frameworks.

Possible disadvantages of FabricJS

Performance
For very large or complex scenes, FabricJS can experience performance issues, leading to slower rendering times.
Learning Curve
While the API is powerful, new users may find there is a steep learning curve, especially those unfamiliar with canvas-based programming.
Large File Size
FabricJS can be relatively large compared to simpler libraries, which may impact initial load times, especially on slower networks.
Limited 3D Capabilities
FabricJS is primarily 2D focused and does not inherently support complex 3D operations, limiting its use for advanced graphics applications.
Complexity in Advanced Features
Implementing advanced features, such as custom hit detection or event processing, can be complex and may require a deep understanding of the library’s internals.

Konva features and specs

Easy to Use
Konva provides an intuitive API for creating 2D canvas applications, making it accessible for developers who may not be familiar with complex graphic programming.
High Performance
It leverages HTML5's Canvas element for rendering, which allows for efficient drawing operations, making it suitable for developing rich, interactive applications.
Rich Manipulation Tools
Konva offers built-in capabilities to easily manipulate and transform shapes, images, and other elements on the canvas, which simplifies the development process.
Layer and Node System
The use of layers and nodes helps in organizing complex scenes efficiently and allows for more advanced features, like hit detection and selective rendering, enhancing performance.
Cross-Platform
Since Konva is HTML5-based, it works on most modern browsers and can run on both desktop and mobile platforms without compatibility issues.

Possible disadvantages of Konva

Limited 3D support
Konva is primarily designed for 2D graphics, and thus lacks built-in support for 3D rendering, which might be a limitation for developers needing 3D capabilities.
Performance on Older Devices
While Konva is quite performant, running complex scenes or high volumes of objects may lead to performance bottlenecks, especially on older hardware.
Learning Curve for Advanced Features
Even though it's easy to start with, leveraging Konva's full potential requires understanding its more advanced features and concepts, which may take time for new users.
Dependency on Third-party Libraries
Advanced functionality may require additional integration with other JavaScript libraries which can increase project complexity and dependency management.
Limited Built-in UI Components
Unlike some UI frameworks, Konva does not offer a wide array of pre-built UI components, which could require additional implementation effort for standard elements.

FabricJS videos

+ Add

T-shirt design using fabric js and three.js

Konva videos

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Drawing With Konva

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to FabricJS and Konva)

Konva

Javascript UI Libraries

49 49%

Javascript UI Libraries

51% 51

Flowcharts

57 57%

Flowcharts

43% 43

Org Charts

60 60%

Org Charts

40% 40

Development

22 22%

Development

78% 78

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare FabricJS and Konva

FabricJS Reviews

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Konva Reviews

8 Best Free and Open-Source Drawing Libraries in JavaScript

The Fabric.js library is built upon the same philosophy as Konva and has a lot of the same features. In fact, Fabric.js actually seems to be more popular and active than Konva.

Source: code.tutsplus.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, FabricJS should be more popular than Konva. It has been mentiond 32 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

FabricJS mentions (32)

Ask HN: Framework for Quick Python or Java and Web UIs?
I hope I'm understanding this right: You're trying to build a web UI that can let you overlay and position a QR code on top of another image? If so, I think rather than trying to build your own CLI to do this and refresh the image every time, you can do it entirely clientside with something like https://konvajs.org/docs/react/Intro.html or https://fabricjs.com/, storing the QR overlay position and alpha in state.... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
When You Need More Power Than a Lambda Provides
In a publishing project, we utilized Fabric.js—a JavaScript HTML5 canvas library—to manage complex metadata and content layers. These complexities included spreads, pages, and templates, each embedded with fonts, text attributes, shapes, and images. As the content evolved, teams were tasked with updates, necessitating the creation of a publisher-quality PDF after each update. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
Fun, Beautiful, Printable 'Story Cards' for Kids with Cloudflare AI
This AI-powered Story Card Maker is built as a SvelteKit application with Typescript. Using Flowbite Svelte component library, the whole application was laid out. The layout for the Story Card (emulating the size of a postcard - 4" x 3") is created as an HTML Canvas using Fabric.js. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
JSON Canvas – An open file format for infinite canvas data
The canvas in Obsidian is as the whole app very well made. I wondered what they are using as well. My guess is https://www.xyflow.com/, which is for drawing nodes. More general purpose would be http://fabricjs.com/. Or very low level https://pixijs.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
Step by step on how to setup fabric.js in the next.js app
Fabric.js is a powerful and simple Javascript HTML5 canvas library. It provides an interactive object model on top of the canvas element. Fabric also has SVG-to-canvas (and canvas-to-SVG) parser. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago

Konva mentions (15)

I'm trying to make a Nextjs canva clone for my company
I have been assigned a task to create a sort of a canva clone which will have almost same features as canva with authentication, access control and rating system(not in this phase). I need help in finding libraries similar to https://konvajs.org/ which has updated docs and great support for Nextjs. Source: over 1 year ago
Any Ideas How to Create a Graph Builder UI in React?
Used goJS in one project and konva in another. Source: almost 2 years ago
How to make something like this in react? (video in description)
All the UI part would make sense to do in React. The actual drawing board you likely would need to implement in canvas or SVG. It still could be a React component, but for actual drawing, you'd probably use something like Konva (https://konvajs.org/). Source: almost 2 years ago
Plug Konva events into RxJS
During the development of a complex interactive UI for the configuration of a digital laboratory ecosystem, we were utilizing the Konva.js library. Konva is a wrapper around the HTML canvas that simplifies working with shapes and interacting with the canvas a lot. Everybody dealing with the plain canvas API knows how much code certain tasks require, especially when user interaction with the drawn shapes is... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
How to integrate polotno in Angular framework?
Why Polotno? Polotno is an opinionated JavaScript library and React components to build canvas editors for several business use cases. It is a canvas editor tool using konvajs.org/. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing FabricJS and Konva, you can also consider the following products

GoJS - GoJS is a JavaScript library for building interactive diagrams on HTML web pages. Build apps with flowcharts, org charts, BPMN, UML, modeling, and other visual graph types.

Paper.js - Open source vector graphics scripting framework that runs on top of the HTML5 Canvas.

p5.js - JS library for creating graphic and interactive experiences

mxGraph - mxGraph is a fully client side JavaScript diagramming library - jgraph/mxgraph

Three.js - A JavaScript 3D library which makes WebGL simpler.

jsPlumb - jsPlumb is an advanced, standards-compliant and easy to use JS library for building connectivity based applications, such as flowcharts, process flow diagrams, sequence diagrams, organisation charts, etc. More than just a diagram library.