3 ms·

This has all happened before. Java web things, Flash, etc. they all have the same problem that they don’t fit in with semantic web content

zdragnar 3y ago
That's not why those things died, though. They died because smartphones stopped supporting them, and that combined with advancements in JS engine speed were all it took to get brother vendors to scrap the buggy, security-hole-ridden plugin ecosystem. WASM should hopefully not be bad from a security perspective, but the up-front performance penalty of early demos in downloading megabytes for hello world was painful. More purpose-fit, smaller modules ought to be broadly useful but I'll not be holding my breath. Anything that needs to take over a canvas probably isn't going to be widely adopted outside of some niche things like visual design tools or the occasional game.
- tcfhgj 3y ago
  Megabytes are certainly an exaggeration, see 285.4 KB for Leptos
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    >> the up-front performance penalty of early demos in downloading megabytes for hello world was painful. > Megabytes are certainly an exaggeration, see 285.4 KB for Leptos Those early demos were certainly quite large. I don't think that I found any early demo of WASM to be under a megabyte, for sometimes quite trivial things.
paulgb 3y ago
Flash and Java Applets both owned a rectangle of the screen. Wasm interacts with the page just like JS does. So in contrast to Flash and Java, Wasm fits in with semantic web content to the same extent that JS does.
- throwaway847599 3y ago
  Java applets could access the DOM and even run Javascript functions.
  - paulgb 3y ago
    Sure, but presumably the ones that “don’t fit in semantic web content” is a reference to the ones that rendered a portion of the page in Java, otherwise the same could be said about JavaScript.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  As you can read in the various comments on here, that's also the model many WASM fans are going for. Google Docs switched to rendering a full screen canvas rather than using the DOM, and Flutter/Compose do the exact same thing. WASM is very much heading in the direction of owning a rectangle on the screen. Plus, Java and Flash embeds could also call Javascript callbacks while leveraging the improved performance of their native plugins.
  - paulgb 3y ago
    Google Docs doesn’t use Wasm, from what I can tell. The move towards using canvas/gl/webgpu over DOM for performance is orthogonal to using Wasm. They go together nicely, but if you’re worried about DOM being replaced, Docs is a good example of how that will happen with or without Wasm. Another pattern I’ve seen is to render DOM on top of a canvas, with UI elements done in the DOM, and high-performance graphics on the canvas. This seems to be a good balance. https://x.com/paulgb/status/1688919428740816896?s=46 https://x.com/paulgb/status/1688919428740816896?s=46
- troupo 3y ago
  > Wasm interacts with the page just like JS does. It doesn't. Any interaction with the page happens through a JS bridge. > Wasm fits in with semantic web content to the same extent that JS does. It doesn't. It's a VM that runs side by side and only has a tiny window into the rest of the browser through arrays of integers passed between it and Javascript.

zdragnar 3y ago

That's not why those things died, though. They died because smartphones stopped supporting them, and that combined with advancements in JS engine speed were all it took to get brother vendors to scrap the buggy, security-hole-ridden plugin ecosystem. WASM should hopefully not be bad from a security perspective, but the up-front performance penalty of early demos in downloading megabytes for hello world was painful. More purpose-fit, smaller modules ought to be broadly useful but I'll not be holding my breath. Anything that needs to take over a canvas probably isn't going to be widely adopted outside of some niche things like visual design tools or the occasional game.

tcfhgj 3y ago
Megabytes are certainly an exaggeration, see 285.4 KB for Leptos
- lelanthran 3y ago
  >> the up-front performance penalty of early demos in downloading megabytes for hello world was painful. > Megabytes are certainly an exaggeration, see 285.4 KB for Leptos Those early demos were certainly quite large. I don't think that I found any early demo of WASM to be under a megabyte, for sometimes quite trivial things.

paulgb 3y ago

Flash and Java Applets both owned a rectangle of the screen. Wasm interacts with the page just like JS does. So in contrast to Flash and Java, Wasm fits in with semantic web content to the same extent that JS does.

throwaway847599 3y ago
Java applets could access the DOM and even run Javascript functions.
- paulgb 3y ago
  Sure, but presumably the ones that “don’t fit in semantic web content” is a reference to the ones that rendered a portion of the page in Java, otherwise the same could be said about JavaScript.
jeroenhd 3y ago
As you can read in the various comments on here, that's also the model many WASM fans are going for. Google Docs switched to rendering a full screen canvas rather than using the DOM, and Flutter/Compose do the exact same thing. WASM is very much heading in the direction of owning a rectangle on the screen. Plus, Java and Flash embeds could also call Javascript callbacks while leveraging the improved performance of their native plugins.
- paulgb 3y ago
  Google Docs doesn’t use Wasm, from what I can tell. The move towards using canvas/gl/webgpu over DOM for performance is orthogonal to using Wasm. They go together nicely, but if you’re worried about DOM being replaced, Docs is a good example of how that will happen with or without Wasm. Another pattern I’ve seen is to render DOM on top of a canvas, with UI elements done in the DOM, and high-performance graphics on the canvas. This seems to be a good balance. https://x.com/paulgb/status/1688919428740816896?s=46 https://x.com/paulgb/status/1688919428740816896?s=46
troupo 3y ago
> Wasm interacts with the page just like JS does. It doesn't. Any interaction with the page happens through a JS bridge. > Wasm fits in with semantic web content to the same extent that JS does. It doesn't. It's a VM that runs side by side and only has a tiny window into the rest of the browser through arrays of integers passed between it and Javascript.