5 ms·

While I'm concerned that Chrome is the only browser supporting native client (Mozilla outright rejected it), it's still awesome to see lua in the browser.

oblique63 14y ago
> Chrome is the only browser supporting native client (Mozilla outright rejected it) Do you have any sources explaining Mozilla's decision on this? I'm curious as to why they would reject it...
- Jimmie 14y ago
  Publicly they have stated that it's because they think JS is fast enough. I think that they have some private issues regarding a plugin controlled solely by their browser competitor who wants NaCl apps to be purchased through the Chrome Webstore.
  - simonster 14y ago
    NaCl constrains the CPU architectures that the web can run on. No one is going to compile for anything but x86 and ARM. Some people might not even bother to compile for ARM. This seems bad. (If NaCl were widely adopted 5 years ago, the web would be much less accessible to mobile devices.) PNaCl makes things a little better by using LLVM IR instead of machine code, but one of the LLVM developers has publicly stated that "LLVM IR is a poor system for building a Platform" (http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2011-October/043719.html http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2011-October/0437...).
    - Jimmie 14y ago
      "If NaCl were widely adopted 5 years ago, the web would be much less accessible to mobile devices." I don't agree with this. From what I've read NaCl isn't even getting auto-run by default. It is not trying to replace JS just sit alongside it as an application language. It lets developers target CPU architectures instead of Operating Systems which makes a lot of sense to me. Also it's C/C++, any popular app would be easily ported to mobile devices. Look how far JS has come in 5 years, imagine how for NaCl could have come. On your PNaCl point, it may not be optimal but I love the idea. "Compile to javascript" is an awful concept, "compile to IR" is better for a number of reasons that I won't go into right now.
      - simonster 14y ago
        > I don't agree with this. From what I've read NaCl isn't even getting auto-run by default. It is not trying to replace JS just sit alongside it as an application language. It lets developers target CPU architectures instead of Operating Systems which makes a lot of sense to me. Even if it's not trying to replace JS, if it works well enough, a lot of sites will use it to replace JS, whether because they want to add functionality that's not as easy to implement in JS, because they don't want to expose their source, or just because their programmers don't know/like JS. We have already been through this with ActiveX, which was a similar idea, but poorly executed. > Also it's C/C++, any popular app would be easily ported to mobile devices. Only if the developers care. There's a chicken-and-egg problem here. If your mobile platform can't interact properly with a large proportion of the web, no one is going to buy it, and so no one will bother to port their site to it. > "Compile to javascript" is an awful concept, "compile to IR" is better for a number of reasons that I won't go into right now. Possibly. If you absolutely have to run C/C++ app on the client side, I agree that something like PNaCl (but actually architecture-independent) is a better solution than something like emscripten. But I think it would be even better to 1) run it server side or 2) write it in JavaScript.
- Arelius 14y ago
  It seems that Brendon has commented on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2983157 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2983157 tldr: Nacl cannot be standardized, and the relevant API's are too strongly tied to chrome/webkit details to provide a first-class port to Mozilla.
afsina 14y ago
It is Mozilla's failure. Nacl may potentially be the best and widest deployment environment for native code and games ever.
- zobzu 14y ago
  It doesn't matter, if Firefox supported NaCl none of these games would work in Firefox. They're all Chrome-store only. Besides IE, Opera, etc all rejected it as well.
- tete 14y ago
  Because what we need is another Active X? The fact that this time it is from Google doesn't make it better. We slowly rid ourselves from stuff like Flash and Java on web pages and now we want to make the same mistakes again? I know, it isn't bad in first place (Flash, Java, Active X weren't either), but I'm pretty sure we'll see better approaches.
  - afsina 14y ago
    I do not recall ActiveX running in MacOsX or Linux. I do not understand when People are completely ok when a game is Windows only but when it is in Chrome suddenly preaches multi-browser compatibility. To me, NACL is not a mistake, it is future. Oh also it is damn open source.
    - hermanhermitage 14y ago
      I'm in two minds, I want a near native code execution environment in the browser but wonder if something like Xax offers better room for performance of dynamic generated code.
  - greggman 14y ago
    The fact that you're comparing NaCl to ActiveX suggests maybe you don't actually understand what NaCl is? NaCl is a platform independent secure code execution environment. It is NOT a way to talk to the underlying OS like ActiveX. Is is NOT a way to write plugins like ActiveX. It's effectively just another way to write code in a browser like JavaScript. Is has no more or less permissions than JavaScript. It is no more or less access to APIs then JavaScript. It just has 5 to 100x more speed than JavaScript depending on what you are trying to achieve.

oblique63 14y ago

> Chrome is the only browser supporting native client (Mozilla outright rejected it) Do you have any sources explaining Mozilla's decision on this? I'm curious as to why they would reject it...

Jimmie 14y ago
Publicly they have stated that it's because they think JS is fast enough. I think that they have some private issues regarding a plugin controlled solely by their browser competitor who wants NaCl apps to be purchased through the Chrome Webstore.
- simonster 14y ago
  NaCl constrains the CPU architectures that the web can run on. No one is going to compile for anything but x86 and ARM. Some people might not even bother to compile for ARM. This seems bad. (If NaCl were widely adopted 5 years ago, the web would be much less accessible to mobile devices.) PNaCl makes things a little better by using LLVM IR instead of machine code, but one of the LLVM developers has publicly stated that "LLVM IR is a poor system for building a Platform" (http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2011-October/043719.html http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2011-October/0437...).
  - Jimmie 14y ago
    "If NaCl were widely adopted 5 years ago, the web would be much less accessible to mobile devices." I don't agree with this. From what I've read NaCl isn't even getting auto-run by default. It is not trying to replace JS just sit alongside it as an application language. It lets developers target CPU architectures instead of Operating Systems which makes a lot of sense to me. Also it's C/C++, any popular app would be easily ported to mobile devices. Look how far JS has come in 5 years, imagine how for NaCl could have come. On your PNaCl point, it may not be optimal but I love the idea. "Compile to javascript" is an awful concept, "compile to IR" is better for a number of reasons that I won't go into right now.
    - simonster 14y ago
      > I don't agree with this. From what I've read NaCl isn't even getting auto-run by default. It is not trying to replace JS just sit alongside it as an application language. It lets developers target CPU architectures instead of Operating Systems which makes a lot of sense to me. Even if it's not trying to replace JS, if it works well enough, a lot of sites will use it to replace JS, whether because they want to add functionality that's not as easy to implement in JS, because they don't want to expose their source, or just because their programmers don't know/like JS. We have already been through this with ActiveX, which was a similar idea, but poorly executed. > Also it's C/C++, any popular app would be easily ported to mobile devices. Only if the developers care. There's a chicken-and-egg problem here. If your mobile platform can't interact properly with a large proportion of the web, no one is going to buy it, and so no one will bother to port their site to it. > "Compile to javascript" is an awful concept, "compile to IR" is better for a number of reasons that I won't go into right now. Possibly. If you absolutely have to run C/C++ app on the client side, I agree that something like PNaCl (but actually architecture-independent) is a better solution than something like emscripten. But I think it would be even better to 1) run it server side or 2) write it in JavaScript.
Arelius 14y ago
It seems that Brendon has commented on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2983157 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2983157 tldr: Nacl cannot be standardized, and the relevant API's are too strongly tied to chrome/webkit details to provide a first-class port to Mozilla.

afsina 14y ago

It is Mozilla's failure. Nacl may potentially be the best and widest deployment environment for native code and games ever.

zobzu 14y ago
It doesn't matter, if Firefox supported NaCl none of these games would work in Firefox. They're all Chrome-store only. Besides IE, Opera, etc all rejected it as well.
tete 14y ago
Because what we need is another Active X? The fact that this time it is from Google doesn't make it better. We slowly rid ourselves from stuff like Flash and Java on web pages and now we want to make the same mistakes again? I know, it isn't bad in first place (Flash, Java, Active X weren't either), but I'm pretty sure we'll see better approaches.
- afsina 14y ago
  I do not recall ActiveX running in MacOsX or Linux. I do not understand when People are completely ok when a game is Windows only but when it is in Chrome suddenly preaches multi-browser compatibility. To me, NACL is not a mistake, it is future. Oh also it is damn open source.
  - hermanhermitage 14y ago
    I'm in two minds, I want a near native code execution environment in the browser but wonder if something like Xax offers better room for performance of dynamic generated code.
- greggman 14y ago
  The fact that you're comparing NaCl to ActiveX suggests maybe you don't actually understand what NaCl is? NaCl is a platform independent secure code execution environment. It is NOT a way to talk to the underlying OS like ActiveX. Is is NOT a way to write plugins like ActiveX. It's effectively just another way to write code in a browser like JavaScript. Is has no more or less permissions than JavaScript. It is no more or less access to APIs then JavaScript. It just has 5 to 100x more speed than JavaScript depending on what you are trying to achieve.