14 DAY TRIAL // WebGL, a nascent project that aims to bring 3D rendering capabilities to web browsers, made its first small step with the introduction in the developer builds of Webkit, the open-source HTML rendering engine first developed by Apple and used in Safari and Google Chrome. The support isn't enabled by default and isn't even available in the nightly builds of the rendering engine, so users have to compile the sources with the necessary arguments to get it working.
The WebGL project is being backed by some heavy players with interest in the technology like browser makers Google, Apple, Mozilla and Opera and 3D hardware makers AMD and Nvidia. Development is supervised by the Khronos Group, an industry consortium that also handles OpenGL and also the new OpenCL API. WebGL will, in fact, use OpenGL as the underlying technology to do the actual rendering and aims to create a JavaScript wrapper for accessing the hardware capabilities. 3D graphics for the web are already available through proprietary plugins like Adobe Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight.
The technology will use the 'canvas' element from the proposed HTML 5 standard to do the actual drawing and should benefit from the greater emphasis on JavaScript performance, which most browser makers are making. It is expected to start seeing a wider release and support in the first half of the next year.
Webkit is now the first HTML rendering engine to support the new feature, but it is still a very limited roll-out, only for the most dedicated developers. It is bound to get better support as things progress and eventually trickle down to Safari and Chrome. Mozilla has also expressed its support for the standard, though there is no word on when it will begin to actually introduce it to its Firefox web browser. Opera has also said it will add the feature, but Microsoft has made no such intentions known and is just beginning to warm up to HTML 5, which all other browsers have integrated in some form or another.