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WebGL Standard To Bring 3D Acceleration To Browsers?
Several sources are reporting that while native audio/video support has been dropped from the HTML 5 spec, the Khronos Group has released a few details about their up and coming WebGL 3D acceleration standard. "The general principle behind WebGL is to offer a JavaScript binding to the group's OpenGL ES 2.0 system, allowing code run within the browser to access the graphics hardware directly in the same way as a standalone application can. As the technology would rely solely on JavaScript to do the heavy lifting, no browser plugin would be required — and it would be compatible with any browser which supports the scripting language alongside the HTML 5 'Canvas' element."
Does EVERYTHING need to be reinvented (poorly) on port 80? Really!!!???
Praise be to Moore and his irrefutable law:
We are doomed to use faster and faster Computers and more and more energy, to read pages that might - content wise- just as well run on gopher.
I like this. Why not? It can be expected that web browsers use decent security practices, 3D drivers are already doing a fairly good job of providing a stable API via OpenGL, and everything is floating towards web browsers as new deployment platform, also for games and 3D applications. Better have an open 3D standard than a need of all sorts of plugins where everyone comes up with his own half-working solution. This is the indie game developer's wet dream coming true.
Of course, that's the best scenario. How it plays out in practice, we will have to see.
One CS student VS 893 DOS games: Let's play oldies
Let's abandon decades of fast native APIs and move all our applications to a browser where they will be dependent on the fluctuating feature set of the browser wars, will require programming in JavaScript, and won't have a standard GUI framework to use so that we'll have to code our own from scratch every time as if it's MS-DOS all over again. This way, people will have a pointless, non-native middle-man between their operating systems and their apps!
I've wanted nothing more than to program 3D in friggin' JavaScript. OUR 3D WEB GAME IS COMING FOR YOU, ID SOFTWARE.
the limitation is you, not the language.
It's "direct hardware access" in the same sense as the 2D accelerated DrawRectangle() is "direct hardware access".
-- Sig down
Meanwhile I am trying to find a way to get Firefox to STOP automatic animation. It used to be easy- don't use Flash and disable animated GIF's. Now with Ajax and Javascript, it is nearly impossible.
* Many people (myself included) can't stand movement on pages while we are trying to read things.
* Some people are using thin clients and animation destroys network bandwidth or overloads the main server.
* Still others are on slower, older computers and animation slows their system to a crawl.
* And many more are on laptops/netbooks and animation pegs the CPU and quickly drains the battery.
IMHO, a well-designed site will never create movement unless the user asks for it (with a mouse-over or click or whatever). But that would be a "in a perfect world" type fantasy.
Please, don't bother replying suggesting "noscript"- it breaks necessary functionality of sites horribly.
While JavaScript is not perfect, it is actually a nice little language. It's just that every retard can "program" in it, and then thinks because he wrote a for loop, he is entitled to an opinion about it.
Few people actually know how to program properly in JS. And the only problem is that JS is too forgiving. Just as the rendering engines for (X)HTML and CSS. But that was the original point. And it's not that bad of a point either.
Because simple scripts are way easier than people think. Every person who can play a shooter, puzzle game, or configure some stuff on his computer, can write acceptable scripts. And even total noobs can write bad ones. I think that is a nice thing.
And this is why you can ignore the (non-pro) masses, ranting about JS.
If it were for me, the scripting interface in browsers would have to support multiple high-level languages anyway: Python, Haskell, Java and Ruby would be those that I'd introduce. But others might want Erlang, Ocaml, and maybe even C++. Why not? If the API is clean, the interpreters work as expected, and everything is sandboxed as it should anyway...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The client can't trust the server any more than the server can trust the client. Powerful tools and healthy suspicion is needed on both ends, always has.
Flashblock is horribly inadequate. I'd prefer a solution that didn't involve "yes, I've wasted your bandwidth and other resources loading this flash for you- OH CRAP WAIT, IT'S FLASH! I'll tell it to go away now..."
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Given the history of the web, browsers and multiple companies injecting their own funky little APIs and features, I think a strictly-typed, more "structured" language wouldn't have cut it.
...and you're right, a VM based solution like Java clearly didn't work back in the 90s when PCs were too slow to handle it.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
You know, if I were a damned good sculptor I could probably make a great statue with only a block of wood and a chainsaw... But I doubt the chainsaw would be my tool of choice. That's the problem with javascript -- we have no choice but to use it. Of course, the DOM is the real problem, but really, when have you ever used javascript for something that didn't also involve the DOM, or vice versa?