An interesting interview question

[garote]

This morning in the shower I came up with this question for interviewing a web developer: "How many ways can you come up with, to draw a circle in a web browser?"

Here's my list:

1. Declare a canvas element and draw a circle on it using JavaScript.
2. Construct one artificially in HTML from scaled table segments.
3. Use inline SVG code to describe a circle inside a div.
4. Embed an object - Java, Flash, video, etc - and draw a circle using that.
5. Print a unicode character of a circle, really really large.
6. Reference an image of a circle, in HTML or in an associated stylesheet.

Any I missed?

Comments

[juan-gandhi.livejournal.com]

You can also have divs of varying size, having a color that is different from the background div, thus producing a circle. Small circles are ok this way (or just rounded corners); the browser will probably die of you draw a large circle this way.

[garote]

That gives me an idea for another one:
Draw a period "." in a very large size, the same color as the background, but with a thick drop shadow style applied to it.

Something like:

<DIV STYLE="font-size:100px;color:white;text-shadow:0px 0px 2px black;">.</DIV>

.

Too bad the LJ comment system strips style information. :/

[ethan thompson (from livejournal.com)]

Well I suck at HTML, so somebody will probably bitch me out for being wrong, but can you upload data from QBASIC into a browser?

[garote]

The mechanism of delivery would still be javascript, in that case, so it would reduce to method 1, 2, or 6, depending on the implementation.