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by lukevp 2057 days ago
Why don’t we push for first class wasm precaching in browsers? Right now wasm libs are limited in interop with JS and DOM. Could we have a .net/JVM like language-agnostic wasm standard lib bundled with all browsers, and target it like we do with .net standard? Then app makers could target a .wasm standard release and if the browser didn’t support it, polyfill in at app start the missing features?
3 comments
Spivak 2057 days ago
“Please Update .NET to the latest version to access this website.”
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emteycz 2056 days ago
Surely you know that sites are chasing milliseconds as it has enormous influence on conversion rates?
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JoshTriplett 2057 days ago
> Right now wasm libs are limited in interop with JS and DOM. Could we have a .net/JVM like language-agnostic wasm standard lib bundled with all browsers, and target it like we do with .net standard?

There's already a plan to give WebAssembly direct access to DOM, and to any other API JavaScript would have access to, without needing a JavaScript shim. (This requires integration between WebAssembly and the JavaScript garbage collector, which is part of why it's taking time to develop.)

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ComodoHacker 2057 days ago
>language-agnostic wasm standard lib

Can such a thing even exist?

I think we'd better install wasm libraries (both language-specific and language-agnostic) like we install browser extensions.

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rictic 2057 days ago
> Can such a thing even exist?

Yes, cross-language code sharing is being worked on.

> I think we'd better install wasm libraries (both language-specific and language-agnostic) like we install browser extensions.

How would a site know what libraries are available? How would versioning work?

This is a caching problem, best solved at the normal browser resource cache level IMO.

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