The genius minds behind technology seem to be coming together as
Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple announced to create a WebAssembly.
What is WebAssembly?
WebAssembly is a new binary format –bytecode that will be used in
future browsers with a promise of about 20 times faster performance. Bytecode
is a machine-readable instruction set that is faster for web browser to load as
compared to high-level programming languages.
The reason for this new concept was to overcome the problems that the
previous Java script was facing. The web still hasn’t utilized the full
potential of asm.js and the giants like Google, Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla
are teaming up to create this successor.
“We think this is the start of an exciting path for having your
non-JavaScript source code run quickly and harmoniously with the rest of the
Web,” says Microsoft’s Mike Holman in a blog post.
According to former Mozilla CEO Brendon Eich, the need for WebAssembly
cannot be denied. He adds that Java script isn’t going away in future but
WebAssembly would make things easier.
Programmer Ben Titzer from Google is also working on a new project to
allow Chrome V8 JavaScript engine decode WebAssembly instruction. Along with
that, Apple, WebKit developer Filip Pizlo also requested to bring WebAssembly
support in Safari. “This standard has broad support, and we should continue to
participate in discussions about how to make it great,” Pizlo said.
WebAssembly is expected to grow into portable bytecode for browsers.
The early builds are showing advantages like the binary representation is 20
times faster to parse than the normal one today.
Mozilla and Google are the main teams behind the program and there
working combines the best. There is no formal standards body behind it and it
is still in the early stages of development but with major browser makers
backing it, WebAssembly has a bright future.
WebAssembly will arrive sometime in future but this will not push
JavaScript out the door of web browsing, instead they will work side by side.
According to TechCrunch some parts of the application may use WebAssembly based
modules while the user interface will be written mostly in JavaScript.