Linux Format forums

[leke]

Just heard about this today. It seems to be having a Marmite effect in the web community though.
https://developers.google.com/native-client/overview
Some things that sounded especially nice was the portability aspect, and writing the UI in html, css and js

It could also be good news for gamers
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[bananaoomarang]

Anybody who doubts potential here, check out Bastion on the Chrome Web Store! The first section of the game can be played for free, you won't believe it's running in your browser!

And here's the technical specification for NaCl:

https://developers.google.com/native-client/overview


I got some basic Hello World stuff running, hoping to do some more advanced OpenGL testing later.

I'm all for Javascript, but not when it clearly hasn't been designed for making complex game engines! However fast today's interpreters are, it's been proven they still use far, far more power/resources to do 'resource intensive' tasks, so these tasks are far more 'resource intensive' in JS! You can't get away from the fact that we need access to the hardware to create compelling, fluid experiences (not to mention ones that are gracious to the environment!).

The browser, at the end of the day, is just a sandboxed file manager that can open and run a whole bunch of files, it still needs a host OS, host hardware. The dream for me is to be able to point a piece of software at any file, local or otherwise, and have it be run. Today's technology isn't quite there yet, we have both the desktop and the browser metaphor with which to access content.

Maybe we'll go to a place where all the intensive apps are actually run in the cloud, a la OnLive, but I don't think that'a place any of us *really* want to go. NaCl is one solution to safe deployment of native code, it's not nearly there, but it's an incredible technological showcase.

The internet is a wonderful and ridiculous creation, a network of thousands upon thousands of machines, that can all communicate with each other! We don't quite know how to use it yet, but experimentation is the best way to get there and NaCl is an excellent example of creative experimentation, safe native code? That's sort of the dream.
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