PUBLIC MARKS with tags canvas & images

To do this, it needs to have access to the individual pixels of the images it's operating on -- which is why for jQSlickWrap to work, you need to have a browser that supports HTML 5's new canvas element. Here's an overview of the algorithm: 1. If necessary, pre-load the image. 2. Determine the CSS styles for the image (float and padding). 3. Create a canvas element and set its dimensions to the size of the image plus its padding. 4. Draw the image onto the canvas in the top-left location. 5. Figure out the "background" color of the image by examining the pixel data at the top-left corner of the image. 6. Fill the canvas with this background color.

The ability to create rich graphics on the fly is one of the critical gaps in Ajax. There are indeed techniques to do it, albeit far from perfect, and some are do-able today if you take a pragmatic view of things and keep graceful degradation in mind.