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.
5 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 MoreResponsive 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.
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