WebGPU – the successor of WebGL, a brand new API to utilize GPUs in the browser. It is promised to be available in regular Chrome in Q1 2022. In comparison to WebGL, WebGPU promises better performance and better compatibility with modern hardware, but the most recognizable feature of WebGPU is a special API for performing computations on GPU.
You’ve probably noticed over the last year that I haven’t been that active writing on the blog. Sorry, I was busy with this study. Let’s make an agreement straight away – this is not your ordinary tech article (although you will find some interesting implementation details here). This is a study to prove that new technologies don’t tear the fabric of time, to prove that things that seem incompatible, located in unimaginably distant cultural coordinates, can still be touched and the touch is beautiful. For me personally, this study is especially significant. The story began ten years ago when a Buddhist friend proposed making a mobile prayer application. This venture raised a huge number of questions to be resolved before the primary one could be addressed: “Can a computer pray for the benefit of all living beings?”
Want a spoiler? The result is here. After launching the computer starts praying for you in accordance with Tibetan Buddhism customs. How comes? Read the article.
Read More5 years ago shaders transformed game graphics and became the technology behind all amazing VFX we see in computer games. Now they are ready to rock the Web. Shaders are little programs written in C-like language GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language) which are aimed for defining the state of vertices (vertex shaders) and pixels (fragment shaders) in OpenGL / WebGL context using math equations. GLSL compiles and runs at GPU achieving unprecedented performance for HTML/CSS world. Shaders are widely used in game development and 3d graphics apps providing unlimited abilities for implementing special effects and rendering techniques however for Web development GLSL is still underutilized despite wide browsers support. This article reviews real world shaders usage for Web UI development and provides some how-to`s on integrating GLSL component into your Web application.
Isomorphism – is an ability to run the same code and generate UI on server side as well as on client. It owes it`s appearance to the power of Node to run server side Javascript and became really popular in recent years after ReactJS established. Isomorphism is one of the hottest and on demand topics in Web development at the moment. This is right time to assess it`s value and effect and to review isomorphism as a one more leap towards new kinds of architectures and solutions. This article is a dive into one of them – viral Javascript technique which is used for Web applications P2P delivery.
Have you ever faced a need to rasterize HTML content in browser? Probably not, but this is not a reason to stop reading this article. Integration testing, page thumbnnails, remote printing, GPU rendering – this is a short list of tasks HTML rasterization is needed for. Sooner or later you will meet rasterization on your way. Let`s have a look at tools and approaches, actual problems of this field and also think about better way for HTML content rasterization.
Read MoreIn recent time Web development community had a big discussion on “DOM is slow” topic. This thesis is truthful. DOM is a quite complex model which starts a ripple of events or chain reaction over document on every modification. This impacts animations first of all. Since desktop browsers are mostly fine with handling animations at 60 FPS, mobile and embedded devices still provide bad, janky user experience.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory – scientific institution making a lot of research and development for NASA. JPL have been developing software for most of unmanned missions in the field of deep space and other planets exploration. Their portfolio includes such famous missions as Curiosity Mars rover and Voyager probe which left solar system after 25 years of flight and still providing scientific information. High level of automation and long duration of missions led to superior demands to software quality. As a result of JPL amazing experience a set of code guidelines was developed and published recently. Since demands to web-driven software constantly increase and more critical tasks are entrusted to JavaScript, lets apply NASA coding guidelines to JavaScript / HTML applications for higher performance, reliability and the better world.
Read MoreBetter composition and code reusing are top important topics of modern front-end development. Great solution for this is web-components technology but it requires few polyfills in order to work properly in modern browsers. This impacts performance and reliability. ReactiveElements allows to use React.js for web-components definition, avoid including most of polyfills and build project with web-components right now.
UPD: You may use MVC Elements in order to create Web Components of Angular and Backbone views.
Read MoreRotation is an everyday magic. It is an effect which can transform boring web page to a much more interactive place. Since rotation was added to CSS specification it have been deprived of attention. However a lot of cases need to rotate elements with mouse or touch. They are: roulettes, circular menus and other fancy things we still can not imagine at the moment. Propeller.js is a JavaScript library which easily enables rotation of elements with mouse or touch gestures.
Responsive images are common citizens of web applications and very often they are a bit larger than we need for particular screen size. This raises unnecessary memory usage for mobile devices and other low resolution screens.
Read MoreGood day colleagues! One more good day which will ends quickly become past and will present one more step forward for us. How will front end development we are all passionate of look like tomorrow?
Funkyphone is an experiment in two directions: it connects freestyle visual art with music creation and uses WebAudio API for sound generation.
