JavaScript either strokeRect or fillRect blurry depending on translation

Question

Earlier on I noticed that strokeRect (and any other method that involved stroke such as lineTo) created a grey 2 px wide line instead of a 1px wide black line. After some Google searching I found that context.translate(0.5, 0.5) fixed this. but now fillRect (and like before any other method that involves fill) creates a black box with a grey border around it.

Does anyone know a good way to make it so that both fillRect and strokeRect have crisp edges with no grey borders? I also don't know whether or not I should use context.translate(0.5, 0.5) for images, as it seems like SVGs have crisp edges regardless of whether or not I translate.

Here is a jsfiddle demonstrating this: http://jsfiddle.net/Tysonzero/ydm21pkt/1/

Note that the bottom strokeRect is crisp while the top one is blurry, and the top fillRect is crisp while the bottom one is blurry.

Answer 1

Strokes draw half-inside & half-outside the x,y coordinates. That's why you are seeing the blur with integer x,y and why it clears up when the x,y are offset by a half pixel. Here's more on why the blur occurs: http://www.mobtowers.com/html5-canvas-crisp-lines-every-time/

An easy way to make rects crisper is to add methods to your context instance that offset strokeRect & fillRect for best appearance:

var canvas=document.getElementById("canvas");
var context=canvas.getContext("2d");
var cw=canvas.width;
var ch=canvas.height;

// add pixel aligned versions of strokeRect & fillRect to this context instance
context.sRect=function(x,y,w,h){
  x=parseInt(x)+0.50;
  y=parseInt(y)+0.50;
  this.strokeRect(x,y,w,h);
}
context.fRect=function(x,y,w,h){
  x=parseInt(x);
  y=parseInt(y);
  context.fillRect(x,y,w,h);
}

context.strokeStyle = "#000000";
context.fillStyle = "#000000";

context.strokeRect(100, 50, 100, 100);
context.fillRect(300.5, 50.5, 100, 100);


context.sRect(100,200,100,100);
context.fRect(300.5,200,100,100);

context.fillText('Unadjusted',20,100);
context.fillText('Adjusted',20,250);

body{ background-color: ivory; padding:10px; }
#canvas{border:1px solid red;}

<canvas id="canvas" width=500 height=500></canvas>