In a partnership that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, Microsoft has strongly endorsed Mozilla's asm.js technology for bringing graphically intense games and other performance-critical software to the Web.
In the last decade, the Web absorbed a lot of computing work that in the 1990s would have taken the form of a program that runs natively on the Windows operating system for PCs, rather than inside the browser. Facebook and Gmail, for example, were born as services on the Web. That suited Mozilla just fine, since its mission was to promote the Web as an open foundation for computing. In recent years, to try to attract even more software to the Web, Mozilla created software called asm.js that's designed to accelerate certain types of Web software, such as games where a character explores a 3D environment.
Microsoft, meanwhile, had a different priority: encourage programmers to write as much software as possible for Windows. But on Wednesday, it announced it'll build asm.js into Chakra, a core component of both its Internet Explorer and Spartan browsers for Windows 10. Chakra is Microsoft's engine for running programs written in JavaScript, the programming language of the Web.
"Asm.js is a clear step towards enabling near-native performance for the Web platform, which is why we're excited to bring it to Chakra in an upcoming release," said Gaurav Seth, principal manager of Microsoft's Chakra team and Ed Maurer, principal group software engineering manager of the Chakra team.
Microsoft's move reflects two important changes at the company. First, it's become serious about supporting Web standards and technologies to better compete with Firefox, Chrome and Safari, and to attract Web developers. Second, under Chief Executive Satya Nadella, it's embraced technologies even though they may undermine the power of its Windows business. In addition to supporting asm.js, it's also released a version of its Office software for Apple's iOS operating system, for example, and opened up Office document storage to rival cloud storage providers like Box.
Microsoft grew to browser dominance in the 1990s with Internet Explorer, which it bundled with Windows. Since Firefox debuted in 1994, though, it's steadily lost that dominance, and IE has been dogged with a reputation as a sluggish browser that doesn't embrace exciting new Web technologies. In part to break with that past, Microsoft is introducing a new browser, called Project Spartan, that strips out a lot of old IE code for a fresher start in Windows 10.
Microsoft also has embraced many new Web standards and become more transparent about declaring which it supports.
Microsoft has made big progress supporting newer standards. It's even wooed one former critic, Christian Heilmann, who for years railed against IE's standards shortcomings. "Microsoft. Yes, the bane of my existence as a standards protagonist during the dark days of the first browser wars. Just like my doctor, I am going to the source of a lot of our annoyances and will do my best to change the causes instead of fighting the symptoms," Heilmann said in January of his move.
Unsurprisingly, Mozilla is pleased with Microsoft's move. "We at Mozilla are very excited for IE to join Firefox in providing predictable, top-tier performance on asm.js code and from my discussions with the Chakra team, I expect this will be the case," said Luke Wagner, an asm.js developer at Mozilla, in a blog post.
Source: cnet.com
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