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Submission + - Web browser vendors announce WebAssembly: bytecode for the web

NotInHere writes: The vendors of WebKit, Chromium, Edge, and Firefox announced their united effort to create a binary execution format for the world wide web. Like the previous projects pnacl and asm.js, WebAssembly features near-native performance, but without the vague specification pnacl had, or the space-consuming asm.js format, which had a 20x parsing overhead compared to a bytecode format (now arrays can be used instead of lookup maps, and no heavy decompression step). Besides wider adoption as its plugin-less, and an open specification, the main advantage of this project over plugin based solutions like java applets has been characterized by Mozilla's Luke Wagner as:

[T]he API surface area is that of the Web platform (e.g., WebGL for graphics) and thus WebAssembly use cases will contribute to driving forward the whole Web platform.

The inventor of javascript, Brendan Eich, writes in his blog entry covering WebAssembly about the polyfill plans:

It’s crucial that wasm and asm[.js] stay equivalent for a decent interval, to support polyfilling of wasm support via JS. This remains crucial even as JS and asm.js evolve to sprout shared memory threads and SIMD support.

He further writes:

Yes, we are aiming to develop the Web’s polyglot-programming-language object-file format. [...] wasm should relieve JS from having to serve two masters [FAQ entry here].

Most likely due to Mozilla's envolvement, WebAssembly even tries to address the "binary" barrier built up when dealing with WebAssembly on a client.

Comment Meanwhile, Firefox 38.0.5 included even more bloat (Score 5, Insightful) 91

The recent release of firefox 38.0.5 on june 2 has been below the radar of many news sites, including Slashdot, because it was only a "patch" release.

However, 38.0.5 included real feature changes, meaning the inclusion of a proprietary web service. I not just hate that firefox added a proprietary web service prominently to its browser, also they smuggled this in in a patch release, avoiding press attention.

Firefox isn't a randy bitch dog that every dog inside the SV startup neighbourhood springs on, its a major web browser which respects its users. At least it was until 38.0.5.

I accepted that they added the social API, I understood their EME changes, I've thought firefox hello was a good addition. But for 38.0.5 pocket integration, I'm heavily disappointed by mozilla.

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