A WebGL Primer
Web Graphics Library, or WebGL for short, is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D or 3D graphics in the browser (those browsers that support it). It is maintained by the Khronos Group which has this to say about WebGL on it’s website.
WebGL is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard for a low-level 3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES 2.0, exposed through the HTML5 Canvas element as Document Object Model interfaces…WebGL brings plugin-free 3D to the web, implemented right into the browser. Major browser vendors Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox), and Opera (Opera) are members of the WebGL Working Group.
What this looks like practically is that a developer can use JavaScript to draw graphics on the HTML <canavas> element. The end result brings a significant change to how developers go about rendering this sort of content on websites.
In the early to mid-2000’s anything having to do with 2D and 3D graphical animation and/or interactivity on the web was done in Flash. Flash was used to build entire websites that assaulted the senses with a rich, dynamic smorgasbord of visual and audio presentations. However, when Apple decided **not** to support Flash on it’s increasingly popular iPhone (and later the iPad) coupled with other problems inherent in Flash — such as its propensity to be a CPU and resource hog and the inability for search engines to index the content within it — developers began to move away from it. HTML5 emerged and an increase in the popularity of using JavaScript to provide rich interactive experiences on web sites came along with it. WebGL is a part of that transition.
