Mastering OpenLayers 3

Using different renderers

As you may already know, there are three different renderers in OpenLayers 3. The DOM renderer is a legacy method that supports pre-HTML5 browsers. The main limitation of this renderer is that it cannot display vector layers. Vector layers are rendered using a canvas if the DOM renderer is used. Only tile and image layers are created as separate DOM elements. If you must support legacy browsers, which cannot use the canvas element, OpenLayers 2 is a better choice for you as it supports SVG and VML rendering.

The second one is the Canvas renderer, which is the default. It draws every layer separately on a single canvas element, outperforming its predecessor. For now, we don't have to know anything specific about canvas ...