Delivering Quality

If you’re interested in programming graphics on the web I recommend subscribing to Planet WebGL; it has a lot of great tutorials and instructional material for learning how to program graphics in a web environment.

WebGL is technically a JavaScript binding to OpenGL ES 2.0. If you already know OpenGL ES and JavaScript, you should be able to pick it up pretty quickly. If you know JavaScript but not OpenGL and are in a web development career, I encourage you to look into WebGL because it could be one key component of interactive web applications in the future.

Vladimir Vukićević, the pioneer of bringing the well known OpenGL standard to the web, has just blogged using Firefox to render Spore creatures. Check it out, it’s a pretty impressive demo of this upcoming web standard.

Development on what would become WebGL started back in 2007 with Canvas 3D as an extension for Mozilla Firefox 3.0. Since then it has grown from a single project to an open web standard through the Khronos standards group. The standard is currently under development with a target release date of first half 2010.

Firefox isn’t the only web browser to be experimenting with WebGL, Google and Opera have also pledged to support this standard. The WebKit source code has recently picked up preliminary support.

The web has mostly stayed 2D, but with the advent of CSS Transforms and WebGL, the browser is moving into new territory. The web is evolving into the most important platform of the future.