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> Since this is basically Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, your native applications are going to work just fine on those platforms. But, you need people to downlo

by azakai 12y ago

> Since this is basically Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, your native applications are going to work just fine on those platforms. But, you need people to download and install your app in that case. The reason major game companies are investing in asm.js ports, even though their engines work great natively, is because the web is a very good distribution platform. That's really all there is to it - no one controls the web, there's no charge to ship a game there.

WBrentWilliams 12y ago
Very true and so very close to what I think is Microsoft's true motivation: Office. Viewed through the prism that Office is Microsoft's cash cow and the criticism that the Office version available online in browser is limited, like Google Docs is limited (there's at least one feature that doesn't work given a large enough set of features from Word...), asm.js makes perfect sense. Perhaps Microsoft will tier their products in a different way. A Office 360 subscription (or whatever it is branded) will get you access to Office, running in a browser, under asm.js. Perhaps they'll do something different. Sooner or layer, however, the Microsoft embrace of this technology will be monetized. There are side-effects. Microsoft can sell tools that now run a tranpiler to put executables on the web. They might or might not use LLVM to that end. This development means that asm.js has become a defacto standard. It is too soon to tell if this will be more widely adopted, as defacto standards fail al the time. I think, however, that this one will stand. Quite likely we all are now going to be freed and constrained by small design decisions made long before this adoption came to pass.
camgunz 12y ago
The web is a great distribution platform for one subset of applications (news, email, social, etc.) and a bad distribution platform for basically all others. Pixlr is a great example; GIMP will do everything Pixlr does, faster, and without a network connection (yeah load time is bad, but that's a GIMP-specific problem). GIMP doesn't have to pay any money, other than hosting (which an asm.js application also would have to pay) to distribute their app. I can use GIMP without downloading it every time. I can also continue to use GIMP if/when its developers decide to give up. When Pixlr's developers give up, it's gone for good. I also think pouring millions of man hours into a transpiler and JavaScript engine optimizations is probably the least efficient and most convoluted way to take advantage of the web as a distribution platform. I think the way this should all be framed is, "it would be better if browsers supported a lower-level bytecode, or more languages, or both, but that's politically impossible to achieve, so we have asm.js". That's the only thing that makes sense to me here.

by azakai 12y ago

WBrentWilliams 12y ago

Very true and so very close to what I think is Microsoft's true motivation: Office. Viewed through the prism that Office is Microsoft's cash cow and the criticism that the Office version available online in browser is limited, like Google Docs is limited (there's at least one feature that doesn't work given a large enough set of features from Word...), asm.js makes perfect sense. Perhaps Microsoft will tier their products in a different way. A Office 360 subscription (or whatever it is branded) will get you access to Office, running in a browser, under asm.js. Perhaps they'll do something different. Sooner or layer, however, the Microsoft embrace of this technology will be monetized. There are side-effects. Microsoft can sell tools that now run a tranpiler to put executables on the web. They might or might not use LLVM to that end. This development means that asm.js has become a defacto standard. It is too soon to tell if this will be more widely adopted, as defacto standards fail al the time. I think, however, that this one will stand. Quite likely we all are now going to be freed and constrained by small design decisions made long before this adoption came to pass.

camgunz 12y ago

The web is a great distribution platform for one subset of applications (news, email, social, etc.) and a bad distribution platform for basically all others. Pixlr is a great example; GIMP will do everything Pixlr does, faster, and without a network connection (yeah load time is bad, but that's a GIMP-specific problem). GIMP doesn't have to pay any money, other than hosting (which an asm.js application also would have to pay) to distribute their app. I can use GIMP without downloading it every time. I can also continue to use GIMP if/when its developers decide to give up. When Pixlr's developers give up, it's gone for good. I also think pouring millions of man hours into a transpiler and JavaScript engine optimizations is probably the least efficient and most convoluted way to take advantage of the web as a distribution platform. I think the way this should all be framed is, "it would be better if browsers supported a lower-level bytecode, or more languages, or both, but that's politically impossible to achieve, so we have asm.js". That's the only thing that makes sense to me here.