18Dec Why Google Native Client is not a Flash competitor

There has been a lot of buzz around the internet about Google’s new development project called Native Client. This very ambitious project attempts to being desktop applications to the web browser. This project has a very long road ahead of them as it becomes extremely difficult to regulate an application that is able to access hardware or low level software hooks at will. However, even when this project is able to find its feet, it is NOT a competitor to online interactive mediums like Flash or Silverlight. This is because desktop applications are tailored to the desktop platform. Sure, Native Client can run the game Quake through the browser, but why wait downloading 100+ megabytes to play the game inside a small browser window when you could download it in its original form and play it on the desktop? The platform is simply not web-friendly at its core. Having said that, perhaps one day once the internet speed is as fast as desktop HDs and Native Client is able to execute code without any dependency on the operating system, that would be golden. This would allow browsers (like Chrome) to literally be the operating system for the computer. However, while Native Client may be backwards compatible, Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX are working hard to bring OpenGL acceleration and near-desktop math processing support. These platforms are much more web-friendly as they are optimized to be compact and able to stream load their code during runtime (which is highly valuable when you are considering enterprise-class applications).

I’m still very annoyed by the fact that Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX are all roughly 10 times slower in basic math operations than pure C# or any other desktop platform.

Author: Jonathan Dunlap Jonathan is an experienced software engineer, sole blogger of JADBOX, author of FlashMVC, humanitarian, and has contracted work for Microsoft, Coke, and Disney.