Comments on: Google shows Native Client built into HTML 5

Google shows a version of its technology for putting Web applications on steroids that's built into its Chrome browser. Also: expect Web Worker support in Chrome soon.

[andrew.mager]

This makes me want to be better at Javascript.

[Ben_Tyrer]

This is particularly exciting from a video gamer's perspective. If you look at the popularity of an in-browser MMORPG such as Jagex's Runescape, the ability to let browsers take advantage of hardware to accelerate 3D graphics could bring about a wave of this type of medium.

Another example would be the recently launched Quake Live, which people queued up for some time to get into upon launch.

I'm very interested where developers will take this technology in the next few years!

[Police_States_of_America]

i guess this is the real reason microsoft is worried [ http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090508/microsoft-to-eu-you-might-want-to-take-a-look-at-google-when-your-through-with-us/ ] about chrome

[GKrynen]

Shades of days long ago when we had an application on our computer to run the web, this software was called Compuserve and AOL and many others. Data stored on their system then code executed and ran on the users systems, just to push the data back to the server.

[Hunnter2k3]

The Web Workers spec is very interesting, they have tried to emulate the same system with Gears to an extent, and it paid off quite well.
But like all small-scale plugins, ultimately useless... (even though it comes with Chrome natively)

Next 5-10 years of web dev will certainly be an interesting one, a lot of change is going to be happening. (even for Microsoft, actually, ESPECIALLY for Microsoft, unless they want to be a decade behind...)

And it should make my current job much easier since i am developing a web-based game that requires some decently fast JavaScript, but i will also be using background tasks so i can use the massive numbers of users (hopefully!) as processors. (real reason is so i don't need to learn Perl... )
HTML textures failed due to not being fast enough and stalled all current browsers / Chrome's tab.
Going to try Canvas now, but i doubt it will be any different...

Now where did i put that time machine...

[almo-8]

Adobe demonstrated running native code in Flash Player (Quake) in 2007. The difference: Compiling native C/C++ code into ActionScript (for Flash) can execute at the same speed as Google's native client while maintaining platform and browser independence. Google's solution is dependent on a particular family of CPUs. That's a big deal. Sorry Google.

[UsingUrBrainSinceUArent]

That's bull. Adobe's got a lot of the same issues.
Why do you think that Flash (video, in particular) on ARM is so far away?

I'll give you a hint -- "it ain't x85 + 1".

[MadLyb]

So many questions, so few answers.

How is this different than a CLR or JRE?
How do they preserve security, but deal with the limitations that normal browser sandboxing introduces?
How do they achieve standardized performance across OSes, and browsers?
Will the client code be completely available to companies like MS, Opera and the Mozilla foundation?

And the final question...if we have to install a plug-in, why not just make it a container directly in the OS and leave the freaking browser out of it?

[Shankland]

I recommend reading this story on Native Client: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10227150-2.html

It should answer some of those questions, though no doubt not sufficiently. Reading the Google description (http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/) and NaCl paper (it won an IEEE award - http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/nacl/googleclient/native_client/documentation/nacl_paper.pdf) is also worthwhile.

The software is open-source, so anybody may incorporate or use it. (It's under the new BSD license (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php) so I imagine even Microsoft could swallow it if it chose). NaCl uses the NPAPI plug-in technology (though Google wants to "revise" that standard to make various improvements, Chen said Thursday), so it should work with most browsers in plug-in form; implementation of the Web Worker version is another matter, of course. Google offers NaCl (though only in experimental form at present) for Chrome, Firefox, and Mozilla on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

It's different from Java runtime environment and Microsoft's CLR in that it's not a full-fledged platform for running code, with a huge range of built-in libraries. Instead it's just a mechanism for developers to create code that can be downloaded over the Web and executed safely (Google argues). The security comes through creation of code through a specialized compiler (Google uses a modified GCC), sandboxing, and static analysis that disassembles the machine code to ensure various prohibited operations aren't taking place.

I didn't mention it in the story, but Google ran a security contest to pay people to find vulnerabilities. That yielded 22 problems, none of them showstoppers, Chen said Thursday.

[Shankland]

@almo-8: The demo was in 2008, and it uses an Adobe Labs technology called Alchemy that translates C or C++ into ActionScript bytecode for execution within Flash Player. That translation imposes a performance penalty, as Adobe acknowledged to me, but it offers security and portability benefits. Native Client has portability issues, too. At present it runs only 32-bit x86 code, but Google has plans for 64-bit and for ARM as well (think Android phones).

@UsingUrBrainSinceUArent Adobe does have processor limitations with Flash, but once it has Flash for a given platform, Alchemy should be able to work there. So they have different issues than Google.

[Qtechbg]

And this is news how exactly? Anyone remember M$ and IE's ActiveX?

[Shankland]

ActiveX and Native Client have very different security models. ActiveX' asks the user whether he or she trusts the publisher of the code. NaCl disassembles the code to make sure it doesn't do anything naughty. How well it works remains to be seen, of course, but it's very different from ActiveX (and Java, and Flash).

[forever4now]

I was wondering what happened to Native Client. It is good to see that it is moving forward. The combination of HTML5 and Native Client should allow for the development of some VERY powerful web apps.

Imagine an application like Photoshop. If Adobe needs to fix a bug, they simply modify the web app & millions of users are automatically updated...on Windows, OS X & Linux machines. Now THAT is efficiency!