Html5 Canvas animations

I am looking to get into learning how to use the html5 canvas to do animations as well as other things. I have an excellent knowledge of javascript and programming in general (mostly php but can adapt to anything). However, I have not had the opportunity to do much with graphics in the past. I have created nice smooth animations using javascript/jquery but the canvas object seems to be alot more than just that. The hardest part I am finding as I have been playing with it is that you have no reference to an object on the stage unless you store the reference. For example if I create a div on the page I have that reference to the object. However, with the canvas object if you create something within it, it draws that element on the stage giving you no reference to it. So you have to manually stor开发者_StackOverflow社区e the details of that object as I understand it and I could be wrong (if I am please correct me).

Anyways the whole point of this post is to see if anyone can point me to some really good articles/help about working with the canvas object. Not just drawing graphics to it cause I have been able to accomplish that very easily. But I would like to articles/help on managing the objects on the canvas. I want to make sure that I am doing this correctly/efficiently for the future of the technology. Also I am willing to purchase a book on working with html5 canvas/graphics/animations but most of them that I have seen go over the whole scope of html5 and leave out alot of the details of actually working with the canvas. So if you know any good books with my requirements please recommend them here.

Any help is appreciated.

There are nice libraries to do very basic to complex graphics using HTML5/WebGL

This may not actually teach you how the animations work. But if you are interested, check Three.js https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/

1. Read article "Creating a Framework For Canvas: Objects and Mouse". Not animation, but you can find there something interestring.
2. Read source code of any big framework, e.h. three.js, or LibCanvas
3. Read "HTML5 Canvas - Native Interactivity and Animation for the Web"