Canvas reference: The font property

The font property sets how any text that you draw on the canvas appears. It's read like CSS font declarations are and you can have bold, italic or bold and italic text if you wish.

Rotating text

Whilst there is no option to rotate text it can be achieved by rotating the canvas first, draw the text (which appears as it would - horizontally) and then rotate the canvas back. Lots of the text functionality can be wrapped up in a custom function (that you can write) to save repeating code. There's one such function linked at the bottom. This function encapsulates options for bolding, italics, mutiple line text etc.

Examples of setting the font property

You can use CSS style font declarations like this:

<script>
    window.onload = function ()
    {
        var canvas  = document.getElementById("cvs");
        var context = canvas.getContext('2d');

        // Different font settings
        context.font = 'Bold 19pt Arial';
        context.font = 'Italic 19px Arial';
        context.font = 'bold italic  19px Arial';
        context.font = '250% Monospace';
    }
</script>

See also