Creative Coding on the Web in p5.js : A Library Where JavaScript Meets Processing

Sammanfattning: Creative coding is the practice of writing code primarily for an expressive purpose rather than a functional one. It is mostly used in creative arts contexts. One of the most popular tools in creative coding is Processing. Processing is a desktop application and in recent years a web-based alternative named p5.js has been developed. This thesis investigates the p5.js JavaScript library. It looks at what can be accomplished with it and in which cases it might be used. The main focus is on the pros and cons of using p5.js for web graphics. Another point of focus is on how the web can be used as a creative platform with tools like p5.js. The goals are to provide an overview of p5.js and an evaluation of the p5.js library as a tool for creating interactive graphics and animations on the web. The research focuses on comparing p5.js with plain JavaScript from usability and performance perspectives and making general comparisons with other web-based frameworks for creative coding. The methods are a survey and interviews with members of creative coding communities, as well as performing coding experiments in p5.js and plain JavaScript and comparing the results and the process. The results from the coding experiments show that compared to plain JavaScript p5.js is easier to get started with, it is more intuitive, and code created in p5.js is easier to read. On the other hand, p5.js performs worse, especially when continuously drawing large amounts of elements to the screen. This is further supported by the survey and the interviews, which show that p5.js is liked for its usability, but that its performance issues and lack of advanced features mean that it is usually not considered for professional projects. The primary use case for p5.js is creating quick, visual prototypes. At the same time, the interviews show that p5.js has been used in a variety of contexts, both creative and practical. p5.js is a good library for getting started with coding creatively in the browser and is an excellent choice for experimenting and creating prototypes quickly. Should project requirements be much more advanced than that, there might be other options that will work better.