“Following HTML, CSS and JavaScript, WebAssembly becomes the fourth language for the Web which allows code to run in the browser
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced today that the WebAssembly Core Specification is now an official web standard, launching a powerful new language for the Web. WebAssembly is a safe, portable, low-level format designed for efficient execution and compact representation of code on modern processors including in a web browser.
“The arrival of WebAssembly expands the range of applications that can be achieved by simply using Open Web Platform technologies. In a world where machine learning and Artificial Intelligence become more and more common, it is important to enable high performance applications on the Web, without compromising the safety of the users,” declared Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C Project Lead.
High-performance applications relying on a low-level infrastructure
At its core, WebAssembly is a virtual instruction set architecture that enables high-performance applications on the Web, and can be employed in many other environments. There are multiple implementations of WebAssembly, including browsers and stand-alone systems. WebAssembly can be used for applications like video and audio codecs, graphics and 3D, multi-media and games, cryptographic computations or portable language implementations.
WebAssembly enhances Web Performance
WebAssembly improves Web performance and power consumption by being a virtual machine and execution environment enabling loaded pages to run as native compiled code. In other words, WebAssembly enables near-native performance, optimized load time, and perhaps most importantly, a compilation target for existing code bases.
Despite a small number of native types, much of the performance increase relative to JavaScript derives from its use of consistent typing. WebAssembly leverages decades of optimization for compiled languages and its byte code is optimized for compactness and streaming. A web page can start executing while the rest of the code downloads. Network and API access occurs through accompanying JavaScript libraries. The security model is identical to that of JavaScript.”