3 ms·

It's frustrating to see incorrect information regarding NaCl in top comments. NaCl is not going to make the web x86-dependent. Recognizing the danger of an ar

It's frustrating to see incorrect information regarding NaCl in top comments. NaCl is not going to make the web x86-dependent. Recognizing the danger of an architecture-specific web, Google has disabled NaCl for everything except the Chrome Web Store. So unless you believe that the Apple App Store has been making the web ARM-specific for the last five years, Native Client is not the x86 lock-in that you may fear. And in fact, Google now recommends PNaCl over NaCl for this very reason. It recommends NaCl only in certain limited situations: https://developers.google.com/native-client/dev/nacl-and-pnacl https://developers.google.com/native-client/dev/nacl-and-pna... And even PNaCl, which requires browser support to run "normally", has a JS fallback called pepper.js. So applications targeting PNaCl do not have a hard dependency on a PNaCl runtime: http://trypepperjs.appspot.com/ http://trypepperjs.appspot.com/

novaleaf 13y ago
correct me if i'm wrong, but it does sound like NaCl is about "making the web x86 dependent", but google also has architecture-agnostic implementations in PNaCl and pepper.js
- haberman 13y ago
  NaCl is disabled for the web. Chrome will not load NaCl modules from the web. [0] I don't know how I can be any more clear. [0] Except perhaps plus.google.com? I haven't heard of this before, waiting for more from pcwalton about this.
pcwalton 13y ago
> Recognizing the danger of an architecture-specific web, Google has disabled NaCl for everything except the Chrome Web Store. And plus.google.com. :(
- haberman 13y ago
  Really? I hadn't heard that -- do you have a reference with more info?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6723956 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6723956 Basically, there is a whitelist of domains in Chrome where NaCl is enabled for non-web-store apps; the basic criteria, according to Google, is that (like the web store) these are places where Google has a lever to move people using NaCl from NaCl to PNaCl over time. Obviously, this applies to Google's own properties.

novaleaf 13y ago

correct me if i'm wrong, but it does sound like NaCl is about "making the web x86 dependent", but google also has architecture-agnostic implementations in PNaCl and pepper.js

haberman 13y ago
NaCl is disabled for the web. Chrome will not load NaCl modules from the web. [0] I don't know how I can be any more clear. [0] Except perhaps plus.google.com? I haven't heard of this before, waiting for more from pcwalton about this.

pcwalton 13y ago

> Recognizing the danger of an architecture-specific web, Google has disabled NaCl for everything except the Chrome Web Store. And plus.google.com. :(

haberman 13y ago
Really? I hadn't heard that -- do you have a reference with more info?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6723956 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6723956 Basically, there is a whitelist of domains in Chrome where NaCl is enabled for non-web-store apps; the basic criteria, according to Google, is that (like the web store) these are places where Google has a lever to move people using NaCl from NaCl to PNaCl over time. Obviously, this applies to Google's own properties.