Craig: Thanks for the reply. I think I see your point.
WebAssembly lives in the browser and is supposed to be almost as fast as native Assembly. So the Smalltalk VMs, which are mostly C, can be compiled to WebAssembly to run inside browsers everywhere and be fast too. Wow. Is WebAssembly released yet? When can we expect such a VM running a standard Smalltalk? What are the pros and cons compared to native apps? All the best, Aik-Siong Koh Craig Latta wrote > Hi Aik-Siong-- > >> I want to go to a web page, select a body of text and have Smalltalk >> code analyze the text in some way and return the answer in the >> browser or in the Smalltalk app or file output. There should be >> two-way communication between app and browser. I would like to do >> live debugging too. > > Ah, it sounds like you want something that would work with > arbitrary websites you happen to visit. I would do that by making a > SqueakJS-powered extension for an existing web browser (e.g., a Chrome > extension). The JavaScript bridge in SqueakJS gives you full two-way > livecoding access to the host browser's JS engine, and I'd probably use > it for the Smalltalk app's UI (driving some JS front-end library, like > React). And there's no reason the object memory can't be Pharo. > > At this point, I think it makes much more sense to run Smalltalk in > a web browser rather than building a Smalltalk web browser. I find > SqueakJS easily fast enough for useful things, like the Cog app > streaming Eliot mentioned. WebAssembly will enable web browsers to run > Cog directly (although subject to web security constraints), making > JavaScript completely optional. > > Yes, the web platform is full of astounding accidental complexity, > as Stephen pointed out. Still, there's a lot of great work, community > energy, and reach in which Smalltalk can now participate, and I'm > enjoying it. (Thanks again, Bert, Dan and all!) > > > -C > > -- > Craig Latta > Black Page Digital > Amsterdam :: San Francisco > craig@ > +31 6 2757 7177 (SMS ok) > + 1 415 287 3547 (no SMS) -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Smalltalk-Internet-Browser-tp4944879p4945093.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
