Marco D'Souza
If you’ve ever experienced slowdowns in your web browsing experience--especially for websites that contain rich interactive features like animated forms and other graphical elements--it’s about to change for the better. In a recent announcement, Brendan Eich (the inventor of JavaScript) announced that the Web will be seeing a new code processing format called WebAssembly that will be faster than JavaScript, the current de facto language in which web code is compiled and run in your desktop or mobile browser.
Currently when running web apps, a browser downloads the entire text-based source code from the server then locally compiles it on the device running the browser. This can sometimes be the cause of slowdowns, especially in mobile applications and when browsing in low-bandwidth situations, as this text-based code can be a relatively heavy download. The primary advantage of the new WebAssembly format is that it is a binary compile format that is significantly smaller and more efficient than the text JavaScript currently used. This will result in code that is faster to download, which means quicker load and rendering times in the browser. Even with the code being in binary format (a format that isn’t really human-readable,) the new standard enables developers to view programs in text format so it is easier to understand. Also the binary format is universal across rendering platforms, making it easier to run across devices ranging from desktops to smartphones.
This new standard is built to operate in conjunction with existing standards like JavaScript, and not replace them. Eventually, it will be possible for WebAssembly to be deployed alongside JavaScript but utilized differently across applications: WebAssembly for page-based animations and the traditional JavaScript for the user interface, for example.
With all of the big players working together for this new web standard, we can expect to see better cross-browser compatibility and quicker performance in websites and web applications.
