6 ms·

Hello WebAssembly

189 points by jongalloway2 9y ago

opendomain 9y ago
This got flagged as a virus on my machine
rmuesi 9y ago
Created an account after lurking here for 2 years to say hell yes.
msoad 9y ago
Hell yes! We need mature frameworks for web apps!
jackfoxy 9y ago
Happy to see the example code is in F#.
bluetwo 9y ago
At the risk of getting a bunch of down-votes: Am I the only one who is afraid we are just going to turn the browser into a delivery mechanism for a bunch of fat-apps?
- jopsen 9y ago
  Anyways, the browser may become a delivery mechanism for fat-apps, but it will keep being much more than that. * we already transpile HTML, CSS and Javascript, * react.js keeps an entire virtual DOM, * the web isn't going away. And if those new fat-apps are browser independent and cross-platform it still seems like a win :)
  - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
    I'm more concerned about the fat more than the app. How will you install a webapp version of Adobe Photoshop? Will you download multi-GB every time you use it?
    - cordite 9y ago
      Some fat apps have a bootstrap that caches the core application in localstorage or some other facility. It may not be a solved problem for gigabyte sized apps.. but it is in concept a problem with a solution.
    - scarecrowbob 9y ago
      If that were the case, obviously it wouldn't work without some infrastructure changes. But imagine an app where each function (like, say, the levels filter) was downloaded as needed and cached. That might be possible sooner rather than later. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why that's a non-starter. But I don't think that it's impossible to have an application of whatever complexity running in a browser... I mean, I remember when doom came out and I had a hard time running it on my machine without tweaking the configuration. And now...
    - kwhitefoot 9y ago
      I'm more concerned about being able to use things like GreaseMonkey to strip junk out of the page.
      - grondilu 9y ago
        WASM is designed to implement stuff that are computationally expensive. The typical junk you want to remove is not. If somehow WASM is used to protect this junk from you filtering it, this is probably done deliberately. WebDesigners can always find ways to bother you, but you can always punish them by not visiting their website anymore.
        kwhitefoot 9y ago
        If I am the only one punishing them out of millions of views it won't have any effect. I haven't bought an IPhone but it hasn't forced Apple to make a device I want to buy.
        grondilu 9y ago
- jackfoxy 9y ago
  Isn't that already happening? Plenty of news sites are already fat apps, when you think about how much code they load to only deliver static content and maybe support comments, very little of the code being useful to end users.
  - teniutza 9y ago
    I see where you're coming from. I have, however, tested a couple of news sites (e.g. BBC, The Guardian) while using an add blocker and the results are very interesting. The "amount of news" is nowhere near the "amount of adds". Without the adds, the news websites (some; I obviously couldn't test them all...) have a decent "size" and load quick enough.
    - empath75 9y ago
      When cnn etc are wasm apps,good luck blocking ads.
- softbuilder 9y ago
  Already there. I just force-refreshed Facebook and am seeing 1.8M. I've made smaller native Windows apps.
- EvanAnderson 9y ago
  Remember the old websites that displayed all their content entirely within a Flash application? You couldn't email links, bookmark pages, parse page content with automated tools, etc. That's what I'm worried about. Somebody is going to come up with a CMS that "compiles" websites to monstrosity WASM applications. Hopefully the types of websites I interact with won't be the kinds for whom such a horrible idea has appeal.
  - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
    You can already do it, and it has been done opponent of times, with JS.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  With automatic updates delivered when the vendor wants to, not when you do. And partial downloading of applications as you hit new features. And we'll need to keep track of disk use for the things...yay, browser package manager! I see a lot of ways this could go wrong.
- flohofwoe 9y ago
  I'm concerned about the "fat" (especially when using high-level languages with a big runtime), but I'm quite enthusiastic about the integrated distribution- and runtime-platform the web is turning into, especially when the alternatives are closed walled-garden platforms.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- grondilu 9y ago
  There are, and will always be, websites that are ugly, fat, obtrusive and whatnot. Thing is: you don't have to visit them. WebAssembly has the potential to say play video games, including AAA titles, without having to install anything on your computer. Same goes for many software projects such as CAD, office, video editing... You could use all this from your browser. I don't know about you, but I find this perspective very exciting.
  - positivecomment 9y ago
    > WebAssembly has the potential to say play video games, including AAA titles, without having to install anything on your computer. It depends on how you define "being installed". All files living on FileAPI and IndexedDB does not make too much difference than using direct file access and SQLite. They will be cached and they will live on your computer. Well, at least until your browser faces storage pressure and decides to randomly delete website data. I mean, yeah, everything lives in a sandbox and there's potentially less security issues. Not having to give admin privileges to an application which allows you to build houses out of blocks is a good idea. On the other hand, the capabilities of the platform is increasing like crazy and it's just a matter of time before it converges with the operating system itself. So, I don't know. The whole situation is weird. I think we needed better operating systems with granular permissions and we're getting there using a very convoluted way.
    - grondilu 9y ago
      > I mean, yeah, everything lives in a sandbox and there's potentially less security issues. Precisely. It's sandboxed. I very much like the idea that I could run any proprietary software inside a sandbox, and reserve "hard install" to FOSS. Also, I just can't ignore the convenience factor.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  You mean excited? With WASM-native APIs for the DOM and WebGL we can basically run full desktop apps without Javascript hacks in the browser. That's amazing. I could even imagine something like a browser but with no HTML or DOM. With just WebGL and maybe a few other APIs you could have a really awesome app platform.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  No, I firmly believe once WebAssembly gets mature, we will get Flash, Java, Silverlight, and anything else you can think of back on the browser.
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago
  It's too soon to worry about. Currently you still need to keep your UI in JavaScript / HTML / CSS so Web Assembly isn't going to be replacing that to deliver "fat apps" just yet. Regardless, when there does come a time that WASM has full DOM access you'll just be replacing a ton of JavaScript and other code with WASM bytecode. Today you can already transpile many languages to JavaScript and some frameworks even allow you to never even touch JavaScript and still create web applications. I don't see this being much different with the exception that you'll no longer be required to used or transpile to JavaScript and this could end up faster (that's a big COULD and will probably depending on what you're doing and how).
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    You can also draw your own UI entirely in a canvas and only use the minimum HTML/CSS to set that up.
    - D_Guidi 9y ago
      There (was?) a framework that does exactly this, I don't remember the name...
      - markdog12 9y ago
        Tough to know exactly what you mean, but there are some UI frameworks running in WebAssembly here: http://floooh.github.io/oryol-samples/index.html http://floooh.github.io/oryol-samples/index.html
        D_Guidi 9y ago
        Something like http://www.zebkit.com http://www.zebkit.com
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - 9y ago
- krapp 9y ago
  >Am I the only one who is afraid we are just going to turn the browser into a delivery mechanism for a bunch of fat-apps If by "just" you mean "exclusively," then no. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of content on the web even today isn't "webapps" but basic HTML, maybe with some JQuery or Google analytics somewhere, but more or less still just documents. Webassembly augments what can be done in the browser, but it still serves a niche set of use-cases when the whole web is considered. Until the day comes when you can't publish anything to the web without a compiler toolchain then I wouldn't worry.
- shadofx 9y ago
  Rather: -Encrypt web content with a hash of the current time -Tell Ad provider that hashing method and have them serve that decryption key with each ad -Embed a HTML renderer inside wasm which decrypts the web content and renders directly to canvas, ads included -If Ad provider is domain blocked, mine bitcoins to pay equivalent cost of an ad click, trading the bitcoins for the decryption key It's the end of ad block and userscripts.
- marssaxman 9y ago
  Didn't that already happen?
Nelkins 9y ago
In addition to this more "official" work on getting .NET and WebAssembly to play nicely, there is another effort to get a small .NET runtime working in the browser [1]. The demos are compelling [2]. [1] https://github.com/SteveSanderson/Blazor https://github.com/SteveSanderson/Blazor / https://github.com/ncave/dotnet-js https://github.com/ncave/dotnet-js [2] https://youtu.be/MiLAE6HMr10 https://youtu.be/MiLAE6HMr10
- jongalloway2 9y ago
  Some additional updates to the Blazor project here: https://github.com/aspnet/blazor-hackathon https://github.com/aspnet/blazor-hackathon
ivm 9y ago
Great to see Mono increasing reach. I bet that Xamarin team with MS backing will slowly make it the default tool for decent cross-platform development. C# is amazing, AoT performance rocks, there are bindings to all the native UIs. It's also mature enough nowadays, so I'm going to use Mono for future projects.
bernadus_edwin 9y ago
Xamarin really need this. Two reason i switch from xamarin to react native. Slow compile and and cannot develope on web platform.
therealmarv 9y ago
So C# works on WebAssembly but not go? :(
ilovemesomeperl 9y ago
Days of native code are gone.

Hello WebAssembly

189 points by jongalloway2 9y ago

opendomain 9y ago

This got flagged as a virus on my machine

rmuesi 9y ago

Created an account after lurking here for 2 years to say hell yes.

msoad 9y ago

Hell yes! We need mature frameworks for web apps!

jackfoxy 9y ago

Happy to see the example code is in F#.

bluetwo 9y ago

At the risk of getting a bunch of down-votes: Am I the only one who is afraid we are just going to turn the browser into a delivery mechanism for a bunch of fat-apps?

jopsen 9y ago
Anyways, the browser may become a delivery mechanism for fat-apps, but it will keep being much more than that. * we already transpile HTML, CSS and Javascript, * react.js keeps an entire virtual DOM, * the web isn't going away. And if those new fat-apps are browser independent and cross-platform it still seems like a win :)
- greenhouse_gas 9y ago
  I'm more concerned about the fat more than the app. How will you install a webapp version of Adobe Photoshop? Will you download multi-GB every time you use it?
  - cordite 9y ago
    Some fat apps have a bootstrap that caches the core application in localstorage or some other facility. It may not be a solved problem for gigabyte sized apps.. but it is in concept a problem with a solution.
  - scarecrowbob 9y ago
    If that were the case, obviously it wouldn't work without some infrastructure changes. But imagine an app where each function (like, say, the levels filter) was downloaded as needed and cached. That might be possible sooner rather than later. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why that's a non-starter. But I don't think that it's impossible to have an application of whatever complexity running in a browser... I mean, I remember when doom came out and I had a hard time running it on my machine without tweaking the configuration. And now...
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    I'm more concerned about being able to use things like GreaseMonkey to strip junk out of the page.
    - grondilu 9y ago
      WASM is designed to implement stuff that are computationally expensive. The typical junk you want to remove is not. If somehow WASM is used to protect this junk from you filtering it, this is probably done deliberately. WebDesigners can always find ways to bother you, but you can always punish them by not visiting their website anymore.
      - kwhitefoot 9y ago
        If I am the only one punishing them out of millions of views it won't have any effect. I haven't bought an IPhone but it hasn't forced Apple to make a device I want to buy.
        grondilu 9y ago
jackfoxy 9y ago
Isn't that already happening? Plenty of news sites are already fat apps, when you think about how much code they load to only deliver static content and maybe support comments, very little of the code being useful to end users.
- teniutza 9y ago
  I see where you're coming from. I have, however, tested a couple of news sites (e.g. BBC, The Guardian) while using an add blocker and the results are very interesting. The "amount of news" is nowhere near the "amount of adds". Without the adds, the news websites (some; I obviously couldn't test them all...) have a decent "size" and load quick enough.
  - empath75 9y ago
    When cnn etc are wasm apps,good luck blocking ads.
softbuilder 9y ago
Already there. I just force-refreshed Facebook and am seeing 1.8M. I've made smaller native Windows apps.
EvanAnderson 9y ago
Remember the old websites that displayed all their content entirely within a Flash application? You couldn't email links, bookmark pages, parse page content with automated tools, etc. That's what I'm worried about. Somebody is going to come up with a CMS that "compiles" websites to monstrosity WASM applications. Hopefully the types of websites I interact with won't be the kinds for whom such a horrible idea has appeal.
- greenhouse_gas 9y ago
  You can already do it, and it has been done opponent of times, with JS.
khedoros1 9y ago
With automatic updates delivered when the vendor wants to, not when you do. And partial downloading of applications as you hit new features. And we'll need to keep track of disk use for the things...yay, browser package manager! I see a lot of ways this could go wrong.
flohofwoe 9y ago
I'm concerned about the "fat" (especially when using high-level languages with a big runtime), but I'm quite enthusiastic about the integrated distribution- and runtime-platform the web is turning into, especially when the alternatives are closed walled-garden platforms.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
grondilu 9y ago
There are, and will always be, websites that are ugly, fat, obtrusive and whatnot. Thing is: you don't have to visit them. WebAssembly has the potential to say play video games, including AAA titles, without having to install anything on your computer. Same goes for many software projects such as CAD, office, video editing... You could use all this from your browser. I don't know about you, but I find this perspective very exciting.
- positivecomment 9y ago
  > WebAssembly has the potential to say play video games, including AAA titles, without having to install anything on your computer. It depends on how you define "being installed". All files living on FileAPI and IndexedDB does not make too much difference than using direct file access and SQLite. They will be cached and they will live on your computer. Well, at least until your browser faces storage pressure and decides to randomly delete website data. I mean, yeah, everything lives in a sandbox and there's potentially less security issues. Not having to give admin privileges to an application which allows you to build houses out of blocks is a good idea. On the other hand, the capabilities of the platform is increasing like crazy and it's just a matter of time before it converges with the operating system itself. So, I don't know. The whole situation is weird. I think we needed better operating systems with granular permissions and we're getting there using a very convoluted way.
  - grondilu 9y ago
    > I mean, yeah, everything lives in a sandbox and there's potentially less security issues. Precisely. It's sandboxed. I very much like the idea that I could run any proprietary software inside a sandbox, and reserve "hard install" to FOSS. Also, I just can't ignore the convenience factor.
IshKebab 9y ago
You mean excited? With WASM-native APIs for the DOM and WebGL we can basically run full desktop apps without Javascript hacks in the browser. That's amazing. I could even imagine something like a browser but with no HTML or DOM. With just WebGL and maybe a few other APIs you could have a really awesome app platform.
pjmlp 9y ago
No, I firmly believe once WebAssembly gets mature, we will get Flash, Java, Silverlight, and anything else you can think of back on the browser.
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
It's too soon to worry about. Currently you still need to keep your UI in JavaScript / HTML / CSS so Web Assembly isn't going to be replacing that to deliver "fat apps" just yet. Regardless, when there does come a time that WASM has full DOM access you'll just be replacing a ton of JavaScript and other code with WASM bytecode. Today you can already transpile many languages to JavaScript and some frameworks even allow you to never even touch JavaScript and still create web applications. I don't see this being much different with the exception that you'll no longer be required to used or transpile to JavaScript and this could end up faster (that's a big COULD and will probably depending on what you're doing and how).
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  You can also draw your own UI entirely in a canvas and only use the minimum HTML/CSS to set that up.
  - D_Guidi 9y ago
    There (was?) a framework that does exactly this, I don't remember the name...
    - markdog12 9y ago
      Tough to know exactly what you mean, but there are some UI frameworks running in WebAssembly here: http://floooh.github.io/oryol-samples/index.html http://floooh.github.io/oryol-samples/index.html
      - D_Guidi 9y ago
        Something like http://www.zebkit.com http://www.zebkit.com
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - 9y ago
krapp 9y ago
>Am I the only one who is afraid we are just going to turn the browser into a delivery mechanism for a bunch of fat-apps If by "just" you mean "exclusively," then no. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of content on the web even today isn't "webapps" but basic HTML, maybe with some JQuery or Google analytics somewhere, but more or less still just documents. Webassembly augments what can be done in the browser, but it still serves a niche set of use-cases when the whole web is considered. Until the day comes when you can't publish anything to the web without a compiler toolchain then I wouldn't worry.
shadofx 9y ago
Rather: -Encrypt web content with a hash of the current time -Tell Ad provider that hashing method and have them serve that decryption key with each ad -Embed a HTML renderer inside wasm which decrypts the web content and renders directly to canvas, ads included -If Ad provider is domain blocked, mine bitcoins to pay equivalent cost of an ad click, trading the bitcoins for the decryption key It's the end of ad block and userscripts.
marssaxman 9y ago
Didn't that already happen?

Nelkins 9y ago

In addition to this more "official" work on getting .NET and WebAssembly to play nicely, there is another effort to get a small .NET runtime working in the browser [1]. The demos are compelling [2]. [1] https://github.com/SteveSanderson/Blazor https://github.com/SteveSanderson/Blazor / https://github.com/ncave/dotnet-js https://github.com/ncave/dotnet-js [2] https://youtu.be/MiLAE6HMr10 https://youtu.be/MiLAE6HMr10

jongalloway2 9y ago
Some additional updates to the Blazor project here: https://github.com/aspnet/blazor-hackathon https://github.com/aspnet/blazor-hackathon

ivm 9y ago

Great to see Mono increasing reach. I bet that Xamarin team with MS backing will slowly make it the default tool for decent cross-platform development. C# is amazing, AoT performance rocks, there are bindings to all the native UIs. It's also mature enough nowadays, so I'm going to use Mono for future projects.

bernadus_edwin 9y ago

Xamarin really need this. Two reason i switch from xamarin to react native. Slow compile and and cannot develope on web platform.

therealmarv 9y ago

So C# works on WebAssembly but not go? :(

ilovemesomeperl 9y ago

Days of native code are gone.