Google Demonstrates Chrome Native Client With Bastion

Multiple readers sent word that Bastion, an action RPG from indie developer Supergiant Games originally made for Xbox Live Arcade, has shown up in the Chrome Web Store. The purpose of the move is to showcase the browser's Native Client technology. From the article: "Ian Ellison-Taylor, Google's director of product management for the open Web platform, said that Native Client, also called NaCl, can currently improve browser performance by 1 to 10 times. 'What would it be like if we could run native code inside the browser,' he asked the crowd, and he enumerated two goals for the Native Client project. He said Google wants to bring native applications to the Web for performance and security reasons, and it wants to enrich the Web ecosystem by bringing popular, long-in-use programming languages to the Web."

A type-safe subset of x86 instructions

[tepples]

NaCl defines a subset of x86 instructions that are verifiably type-safe, just as .NET IL and JVM bytecode are verifiably type-safe. The browser verifies the binary before executing it.

Re:bad idea

[Qwavel]

I'm guessing they mean that you are more secure now that you can run apps in your browser which you previously had to install into your OS. The privileges enjoyed by an NaCl browser app are really minimal compared to the same app installed with admin on Windows (which is how most users do it).

Regarding web standardization, note that NaCl is nothing like Flash or Silverlight: rather then replacing standard web technologies with proprietary technologies, it is primarily a way to optimize pieces of web technology. You take your bundle of HTML/CSS/Javascript and replace pieces of the javascript with native code. And you don't do it with some proprietary google language - you do it (eventually) with whatever language you want.

To me it seems like a reasonable way to move the web forward without subverting it (or even altering it much).

Re:How do I turn this off?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should read up on how NaCl works. It is in a sandbox. One based on software fault isolationi.

Re:A type-safe subset of x86 instructions

[shutdown -p now]

It's not type-safe (there are no types as such on assembly level, it's all just bytes and words), it's memory-safe.

More importantly, the subset of instructions available in NaCl allows one to do lower-level stuff than verifiable CIL instructions (JVM is always memory-safe). For example, NaCl permits pointer arithmetic.

Re:bad idea

[chrb]

Implementing something your own way is evil and proprietary.

Native client is open source [google.com]. So is chromium.