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WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

#61

Post by pjmlp »

underwater wrote: post #55
pjmlp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expect every language out there to have a WebAssembly implementation, including Flash.

Is there really demand for the resurgence of Flash? In its final years it was used to provide capabilities that the browser couldn't, like video playback. Web Assembly will not provide that same advantage.

Lots of nice games to keep alive.

Video playback can be done via WebGL shaders, just like rendering video on the good old days with SIMD.

And most important, why not?

Someone will eventually do it, there are already JVM and CLR ongoing ports.

Re: WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

#63

Post by tomxor »

phkahler wrote: post #38
jazoom wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is a computer for if not running other people's code? I can't imagine there are many people in this world who have a computer with more than even 1% their own code running on it.

Red herring. People install or explicitly download code they want to run. The general public doesn't even realize that most web pages are full of code (js not html) and most developers have gotten so used to it they feel entitled. The goal should be to try harder to use less code, not enable native execution. I understand, engineers like to think about what is possible (wouldn't it be cool if..!) but sometime they ne…

> People install or explicitly download code they want to run

Not really, explicit installation are not the real difference: you ask for one package in some package manager and you will commonly implicitly get a bunch of other dependencies installed, you will likely never be able to feasibly personally audit all those implicitly installed packages if we are talking about e.g OS repositories...

The real differences are:

1. Trust of the authority that maintains a collection of repositories.

2. Execution permissions.

i.e The package manager for your OS can install code that can run with root privileges if it wants, but you have trust in the authority that maintains the package lists. With the web there isn't any curation of package lists, but the code is sandboxed.

Re: WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

#64

Post by zurn »

chkuendig wrote: post #8

Unfortunately SIMD is still not supported on any browsers and with the move away from SIMD.js it looks like this might take a while. We've been working on porting over our fairly large barcode scanner library to WebAssembly. While the performance is close to what we have on other platforms ( http://websdk.scandit.com ), the major bottleneck for now is not being able to use optimized code relying on SIMD (and not havi…

SIMD is like the kids version of GLSL, which works today :)

Re: WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

#65

Post by grondilu »

phkahler wrote: post #18
holydude wrote: post #10

Can't wait for DOM interop and get away from JS on frontend. Seriously JS should not be the lingua franca of the web :)

>> Seriously JS should not be the lingua franca of the web But neither should this. Really, keep your code off my computer as much as possible.

I don't understand this. What are you afraid of? Are you like Richard Stallman, only downloading webpages from email clients or something? Do you have filters that strip all javascript from the web pages you browse?

If you're not one of these guys that refuse to execute any binary code that you have not compiled yourself, you should welcome the possibility of running binary code from a sandboxed web environment.

I, for one, wish I could run all my proprietary software on the web, and restrict all my native applications to FOSS. That's a prospect WASM enables.

Re: WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

#66

Post by afarrell »

pjmlp wrote: post #61
underwater wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really demand for the resurgence of Flash? In its final years it was used to provide capabilities that the browser couldn't, like video playback. Web Assembly will not provide that same advantage.

Lots of nice games to keep alive. Video playback can be done via WebGL shaders, just like rendering video on the good old days with SIMD. And most important, why not? Someone will eventually do it, there are already JVM and CLR ongoing ports.

There is even an ActionScript to Javascript __piler https://as3js.org/

Re: WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

#67

Post by MaxBarraclough »

baybal2 wrote: post #23
RX14 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some clear and defining differences between Java applets and webassembly. The core problems with Java were that the security sucked, and that applets were non-native and didn't use the dom. I doubt there is any desire in web developers to overuse canvasses and do layout in wasm, and the security model should hopefully be as successful as JS's has been over the years.

> The core problems with Java were that the security sucked The core problem with Java applets was that they were Java applets An option to keep the source of the web app closed will fragment the web dev community yet again.

> An option to keep the source of the web app closed will fragment the web dev community yet again.

But this changes nothing. It was always possible to obfuscate JavaScript, just like every other programming language.

Re: WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

#68

Post by fergie »

Can anybody ELI5? The documentation is pretty fluffy.

Does WebAssembly actually open up any new API hooks? I get that its a clever way of transpiling existing programs to JavasScript, but surely we could do that already?

Whats new avenues of development is WebAssembly expected to open up? Is the whole point just to enable an easy way to compile games made on other platforms (Unity) to the web?

Re: WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

#69

Post by tomxor »

zurn wrote: post #64
chkuendig wrote: post #8

Unfortunately SIMD is still not supported on any browsers and with the move away from SIMD.js it looks like this might take a while. We've been working on porting over our fairly large barcode scanner library to WebAssembly. While the performance is close to what we have on other platforms ( http://websdk.scandit.com ), the major bottleneck for now is not being able to use optimized code relying on SIMD (and not havi…

SIMD is like the kids version of GLSL, which works today :)

Not sure what you mean (maybe i'm missing your point) but those two things are not very comparable. GLSL is an uncompiled GPU language and SIMD is a class of CPU instructions that exploit parallelism opportunities at the block level (apposed to core level like a GPU).

Re: WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers

#70

Post by adventured »

hdhzy wrote: post #45
phkahler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red herring. People install or explicitly download code they want to run. The general public doesn't even realize that most web pages are full of code (js not html) and most developers have gotten so used to it they feel entitled. The goal should be to try harder to use less code, not enable native execution. I understand, engineers like to think about what is possible (wouldn't it be cool if..!) but sometime they ne…

Is this relevant what the people are aware of? If you drive a car do you need to be aware of its internals? WebAssembly looks like a safe, portable, intermediate bytecode. What's wrong with giving people more options (e.g. running native applications in their browsers)?

> If you drive a car do you need to be aware of its internals?

You walked yourself into an obvious answer there: yes, to a limited extent you do. That includes understanding a bare minimum about tires, the engine (what noises are normal, what noises aren't normal), oil changing (why, when), windshield washer fluid, basic indications of electric problems, basics about the need to change brakes (indications of brakes going bad, why they need changed), the basics of the parking brake (and not to drive with it engaged and why), the usefulness of different types of tires (for example snow tires), why you shouldn't needlessly over-rev an engine frequently (or do stupid things like over-rev it for an hour while parked), how turn signals work and the need to make sure the lights on your vehicle are functioning, how high beams work (or at least how to use them), how gear shifting works and why it's important not to thrash your transmission (what abnormal shifting sounds like, why that matters), this list keeps going and I've really only covered primitive things that most or all drivers should know within the first year or so of driving.

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