WebGL Standard To Bring 3D Acceleration To Browsers?

Several sources are reporting that while native audio/video support has been dropped from the HTML 5 spec, the Khronos Group has released a few details about their up and coming WebGL 3D acceleration standard. "The general principle behind WebGL is to offer a JavaScript binding to the group's OpenGL ES 2.0 system, allowing code run within the browser to access the graphics hardware directly in the same way as a standalone application can. As the technology would rely solely on JavaScript to do the heavy lifting, no browser plugin would be required — and it would be compatible with any browser which supports the scripting language alongside the HTML 5 'Canvas' element."

Re:i for one ...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Since the GL wouldn't be a plugin; but rather javascript accessible, you'd probably want something along the lines of a greasemonkey script that stripped all references to webGL from site scripts before execution. Not total rocket surgery; but could be tricky if you want webGL features and want to avoid the webGL ads. On the plus side, adblock-style URL based blocking would still work, since(unlike flash blobs) the webGL stuff would just be part of the HTML/javascript/CSS of the page...

Re:Could someone explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

The khronos group is a working group behind the opengl standard iirc

The Khronos Group

[MediaStreams]

http://www.khronos.org/ [khronos.org]

Re:Could someone explain...

[e4g4]

read about them...here [wikipedia.org] They appear to be the people who run the OpenGL standard; Apple, Intel, and several others are members.

several sources...are mistaken...

[daithesong]

"Several sources are reporting that while native audio/video support has been dropped from the HTML 5 spec" is hard to reconcile with http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#video [whatwg.org] (and the same document is available at the W3C, O doubters). It seems (gasp) that several sources can be...wrong!

Re:i for one ...

[jibjibjib]

Flashblock doesn't load the flash content until you click it.

Re:Could someone explain...

[beelsebob]

Simple answer, yes, the editors should do that. But, in this case, no such thing has happened. The Khronos group is an organisation that slashdotters almost all know as well as the ISO or IEEE.

Re:several sources...are mistaken...

[shutdown -p now]

I think that aforementioned several sources are confusing dropping Vorbis/Theora as a required codec with dropping audio/video elements from HTML5 altogether. Ironically, if you actually open TFA (don't worry, no need to read it) and click on the link that's formed by the words "dropped from the HTML5 spec", the article which opens is indeed about dropping Vorbis/Theora, and it's on the same website. Looks like they don't read their own articles - just like /.

Video/audio did NOT get dropped

[Lennie]

Their just isn't a recommendation about what codecs should be supported in the spec.