Drawing a rectangle using click, mouse move, and click

You were close. So, the question isn’t really about the “canvas” element in HTML5, but a canvas that is really a div.

In order for me to see what your code was trying to accomplish, I had to tidy it up. What needed to happen was tracking of the square element.

We are doing one of two things everytime we click on the canvas. We are either creating a rectangle element, or finishing a rectangle element. So, when we’re finished it makes sense to set ‘element’ (previously named ‘d’) to null. When creating an element, we have to assign the new DOM element to ‘element’.

Everytime the mouse moves, we want to get the mouse position. If the element is in the process of creation (or “not null”), then we need to resize the element.

Then we wrap it all up in a function, and that’s all there is to it:

function initDraw(canvas) {
    var mouse = {
        x: 0,
        y: 0,
        startX: 0,
        startY: 0
    };
    function setMousePosition(e) {
        var ev = e || window.event; //Moz || IE
        if (ev.pageX) { //Moz
            mouse.x = ev.pageX + window.pageXOffset;
            mouse.y = ev.pageY + window.pageYOffset;
        } else if (ev.clientX) { //IE
            mouse.x = ev.clientX + document.body.scrollLeft;
            mouse.y = ev.clientY + document.body.scrollTop;
        }
    };

    var element = null;    
    canvas.onmousemove = function (e) {
        setMousePosition(e);
        if (element !== null) {
            element.style.width = Math.abs(mouse.x - mouse.startX) + 'px';
            element.style.height = Math.abs(mouse.y - mouse.startY) + 'px';
            element.style.left = (mouse.x - mouse.startX < 0) ? mouse.x + 'px' : mouse.startX + 'px';
            element.style.top = (mouse.y - mouse.startY < 0) ? mouse.y + 'px' : mouse.startY + 'px';
        }
    }

    canvas.onclick = function (e) {
        if (element !== null) {
            element = null;
            canvas.style.cursor = "default";
            console.log("finsihed.");
        } else {
            console.log("begun.");
            mouse.startX = mouse.x;
            mouse.startY = mouse.y;
            element = document.createElement('div');
            element.className="rectangle"
            element.style.left = mouse.x + 'px';
            element.style.top = mouse.y + 'px';
            canvas.appendChild(element)
            canvas.style.cursor = "crosshair";
        }
    }
}

Usage: Pass the block-level element that you would like to make a rectangle canvas.
Example:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
    <style>
    #canvas {
        width:2000px;
        height:2000px;
        border: 10px solid transparent;
    }
    .rectangle {
        border: 1px solid #FF0000;
        position: absolute;
    }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="canvas"></div>
    <script src="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17408010/js/initDraw.js"></script>
    <script>
        initDraw(document.getElementById('canvas'));
    </script>
</body>
</html>

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