All major browsers now support the WebAssembly standard, the binary format for the web introduced in 2015
Catalin Cimpanu / BleepingComputer.com : Tweets: @weberress Tweets: Weber Ress / @weberress : All Major Browsers Now Support WebAssembly. WebAssembly, or wasm, is a bytecode format for the web, allowing developers to send JavaScript code to browsers in smaller sizes, but also to compile from C/C++/Rust to wasm directly. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ ... http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
WebAssembly was pitched in the 2015 cross-vendor announcement by Google, Microsoft and Mozilla as a shared binary format for the web, and Mozilla shipped the first mainstream implementation in Firefox 52 earlier this year alongside its removal of NPAPI plugin support. With every major browser now on board, the format has crossed from experiment to baseline platform capability.
That matters because the coverage frames wasm as a compile target for C, C++ and Rust running at near-native speed in the browser — the same wave of technologies, alongside Progressive Web Apps and Houdini, that The Verge flagged as capable of dramatically upgrading web apps.
First-order effects
- Developers can now ship compiled C/C++/Rust code to any major browser as compact bytecode, making near-native web performance a default assumption rather than a per-browser workaround.
Second-order effects
- Browser plugin architectures lose their remaining rationale — Firefox had already stripped NPAPI down to Flash when it shipped wasm — pushing ported native applications toward the web instead of plugin or store distribution.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, WebAssembly becomes infrastructure beyond the browser itself: the later Bytecode Alliance launched by Mozilla, Intel, Red Hat and Fastly explicitly aims to carry the standard outside the browser, and it fits the broader shift in which browser vendors, not the W3C, set web standards following the WHATWG takeover of HTML and DOM.
The trend: The browser is consolidating into a universal application runtime, with vendor-led coalitions rather than traditional standards bodies deciding what that runtime can execute.