Additional Web Technologies
WebGL: OpenGL (graphics language) in the browser
provides high performace graphics
WebSocket: asynchrounous, bidirectional, fullduplex communication channel between the browser and web server
provides generic communication
WebGL
HTML5 provides the Canvas object and a graphics API for rendering imges and primitives.
simple to use but relatively new
low performance
WebGL provides an OpenGL window object via Canvas and uses the OpenGL API
hard to use but API is well known, prior experience with OpenGL is a big benefit
high performance; can use GPU
All accessed via JavaScript, though some embedded code such as shader code may be needed.
WebGL libraries such as three.js might alleviate the pain.
Browser compatibility
Compatible (perhaps at an experimental stage) with most browsers and continuing to gain support.
Check compatibility
Old GPU drivers may be blocked for security purposes
Browsers may fall back to a non-accelerate engine, or to use of Canvas 2D or DOM-based rendering.
Web Socket
provides reduction in network traffic and latency by avoiding polling
uses a different protocol to HTTP
ws://
but backwards compatible with HTTP- a websocket starts as a http connection
WebSocket differs from TCP in that it provides for a stream of messages instead of a stream of bytes.