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by Metrop0218 4719 days ago
IE 11 will include WebGL support [1], and due to Microsoft's 'core systems' sharing across big Windows and Windows Phone, this is likely to propogate down to the phone.

However the lack of webkit will remain :(

[1] http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/06/ie11
1 comments
akruckus 4719 days ago
The big issue with not previously including WebGL support was glaring security issues right? Doesn't WebGL essentially use root access to your gpu?
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cscheid 4719 days ago
> Doesn't WebGL essentially use root access to your gpu?

Only in badly-designed, non-conformant user agents. :)

The WebGL security issues have, for at least a year, been FUD. The spec is essentially fixed, drivers have become a whole lot better, and browsers have become a whole lot stricter in their validation code. WebGL is not OpenGL nor OpenGL ES.

Examples: while the OpenGL ES spec is silent on buffer overflows, WebGL mandates user agents to signal errors; while OpenGL ES doesn't specify the state of freshly allocated textures, WebGL requires them to be blanked out; WebGL textures can never be from non-origin-clean canvases.

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gcr 4719 days ago
Except on Linux. As an anecdote, as recently as January, visiting any WebGL sites that used any shaders would reliably panic my kernel with NVidia hardware and the NVidia binary blob. I then switched to Intel hardware which is much more stable but also shows how much variance there is here.

For me to be comfortable with WebGL, we'll have to really train graphics card manufacturers to take security issues as seriously as web developers do. That isn't going to happen any time soon.

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cscheid 4719 days ago
Huh, if you don't mind me asking, which video card? I've used linux+nvidia pretty exclusively for work and never seen anything near as bad on linux (I do run higher-end cards than the average PC, though).

On OS X, on the other hand...

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gcr 4719 days ago
If memory serves, it might have been a "Quadro NVS 110M", which is equivalent to the super-old "GeForce Go 7300". It was an old laptop.
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dstorey 4719 days ago
MS has also focused a lot on security in its WebGL support. For example, it security audits the drivers.
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