When will WebGL be supported on iOS Mobile Safari?

Sorry, but no one outside of Apple knows anything about future product releases. Anything anyone here would post would be pure speculation which isn't allowed here (the Communities are for technical support on existing products). There are a number of rumor sites which you can read, but as to whether any rumors they report have any validity, your guess will be as good as ours.

You can express your need for this to Apple via their feedback pages, if you wish:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

Regards.

Webgl just came out with an actual spec mid year, version 1.0.

Apple will have to investigate it, play with it and see how it affects iOS 5 performance, battery life, stability and security implications.

Best Guess, next year sometime.

Why would Apple support running WebGL in a web browser on the iPad/iPhone?

It is my firm belief that if they do it will kill the App store for games distribution - why would developers develop native iPhone/iPad games and visual apps if they can write it using html5 and webgl and target every device from the same codebase.

I think it is potentially so disruptive for Apple's strategy of maintaining a high degree of control of control over everything iOS. WebGL shifts the balance of control away from Apple - so from their eyes it will be as disruptive as Flash, if not more so- I just cannot see them allowing it run on Safari.

Obviously this is simply my opinion, but I tell you what, I would bet money that what I am saying is true.

Shame though as it would be great if Safari on iPad supported webGL because that would mean PhoneGap apps would support webgl as well. But again, that would cause a dramatic drop in the number of people using Xcode to develop 3d apps.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news - but I will eat my hat if I am wrong - at least for the next couple of years.

I don't think there is (and ever will be) any info on when Apple launches features like this. There is also the problem that the devices cannot know how the developer was thinking when he/she made the app. Enabling WebGL content on an iPad is very likely to be the cause of device crashes if the accessed WebGL file is "too big to chew" for the device.

If your customer is in a hurry, you could always use a proven 3D engine like Away3D and author it as an app? That way you could use the same codebase for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux and even the Playbook ;-)

J

There's a way of compiling WebGL into an app, called "cloudmach", which renders server side and streams it to the device.

It should also be noted that some people have managed to enable WebGL in Safari, but only by using methods which void the EULA which presumably should not be spoken of on apple forums.

I quote "WebGL was added to iOS 4.2 for iAds but Apple has not yet turned it on for general browsing", so the support is there, albeit disabled

It really irks me that there's this persistent Apple is a bunch of ******** who want to screw their customers myth. The reason WebGL is currently unsupported on iOS has nothing to do with protecting the App Store and everything to do with WegGL being a gaping security hole. When the security problem is fixed, Apple will enable it. This is also why you need to explicitly enable WebGL in Safari on the Mac despite there being no App Store monopoly on the Mac.

You are talking rubbish Toniol. WebGL was a POTENTIAL risk. If you check your facts WebGL is not a gaping security hole. To this day both Java and Javascript still represents more of a security risk than WebGL.

If Apple blocked every technology that exposed a potentially security vulnerability in the browser then Apple would only allow users to browse script-free, static content.

The only possible vulnerability of any note in 2013 is the ability to run shaders on the GPU. But not exactly a big deal since GPU space is sandboxed and exposes no resources outside of that. Javascript on the other hand executes on the CPU.

Microsoft are on the cusp of releasing a completely secure WebGL implementation to bring them up to date with all of the other browser vendors (except Apple - who despite what you say obviously have another agenda - not related to security).

They used their might to destroy Flash, and they will do the same with WebGL because as a technology it will allow hardware accelerated, near native performance and Apple have no control over that - so it will destroy any reason a game developer has to use the Apple stack in favour of WebGL. Simples.

As for Safari on the Mac. Security is not the reason you have to enable WebGL in Safari on the Mac. If it was then Java applets would also be disabled by default as well

I don't think Apple will ever enable WebGL unless they are absolutely forced to.

Most people choose Chrome in favour of Safari - and Apple are behaving more and more like Microsoft did in the bad old days...

Fact is that Apple are part of the transnational big business machine, hardball is how *everything* runs. You want to see bad behaviour? Look at the mining industry.

Adobe really do not make good software these days, sadly. They're resting on their lavish laurels with $bn revenues from a captive audience, and they just switched creative suite over to a rent-only scheme.

Flash is a pig. Even on a really powerful computer, I'm going "why is it grinding to a halt?", and then I spot a banner on a webpage just murdering my CPU. We're talking i7 here. For a banner 400px by 80px. There's no flash on this page, the CPU is sitting on one or two percent. If there was the wrong sort of Flash, it'd be beachballing.

The problem with the internet is spam. When you enable a technology, it ends up in banners. Ironically apple have got banners in the apps, based onWebGL, so that can't be the performance issue, eh.

I don't think apple are trying to stop the browser from displaying content in some sort of anti-competitive manner. There are doubtless technical considerations. iOS does not have Quartz Extreme, for one thing.

The issue is probably a combination of reliability, power consumption and also the fact that they've got other work to do on iOS, such as overhauling the entire OS.

Realistically, the iphone is a browser, instead of sites, you've got apps. What I did with mine (hate phones) was pretty restricted, it's a little message-pad, it's not something that you get a proper browsing experience with.

The argument you make with Flash is pretty blinkered. You can just as easily run Javascripts and Java apps which will tank your browser (ever seen a slow script warning). There are countless Javascript based websites which reduce my iPhone to an unusable slow heap of junk.

Ironically, Adobe have turned the demise of Flash into their advantage. Indeed the Flash IDE is now the HTML5 developer's tool of choice for managing graphics resources, spritesheets etc. They have a new suite of apps all focused on HTML, own PhoneGap. Edge is recognized as the most advanced wysiwyg HTML5 development environment. Adobe will carry their community of 10+ million flash developers into the HTML5 world. So it makes no difference for them - in fact they will probably make more money out of their next generation technologies like Edge and Muse than they did with Flash.

Many industries (such as the one I work in - Investment Banking) still depend on the flourishing Apache Flex project - which now provides hardware accelerated 2D and 3D APIs.

Badly written Javascript, Java and Flash all do badly when loaded on Mobile devices.

I recently created an HTML5 using some of the Sencha technologies - very laggy on my iPad3. Whereas the corresponding Flex application (i.e. Flash) runs perfectly well on my iPad3.

Steve Jobs was on a power trip to end all power trips - and not allowing a superior development toolset to flourish on his platform is the real agenda for banning flash. If he has so desired he could have engaged with Adobe like they did with PostScript and make a Flash build immune from the problems you describe. But Steve Jobs did not want that to happen so it didn't. End of.

Dunno, it's a bit off topic, but there's no way that an emulated ARM build of flash would even run at all on iOS at the current point, let alone 7 years ago.

It's not that you can't build good flash, it's just that people don't. As you've said, you can use a dumbed down, non-extensible Adobe GUI to spit out javascript, and it'll tank just the same. Adobe Photoshop used to be the most blazingly fast application on the Mac. Adobe are a different story these days. Flash is a resource hog, whereas javascript is outright inefficient at moving graphics around, although it is improving substantially.

Flex, on the other hand, is open source.

_____

Flash was actually created by Adobe. Adobe owned the vector graphics bezier patents, so Macromedia couldn't build a GUI editor for their Shockwave platform, which was sort of C++ territory, for making CD ROMS. Not used a lot because of the manual type of input required.

Macromedia bought flash as a cheapo animation program with some strange usability ideas (such as applying boolean intersects to overlapping objects without asking you), but combining this legally-released and patent-free GUI editor with shockwave export capabilities made shockwave accessible to non-technical users. Who would pile on loads of effects, run it natively as an app to test, and then deploy it in a web plugin which runs far less efficiently. That's not exactly Flash's fault, but the fact that they've just ported it wholesale a whole bunch of times without a proper human rewrite makes for evil performance, a problem you don't have with javascript. You don't have to get what Adobe want to give you as a binary, like it or lump it.

iOS ***** in many ways, the fact that you have to reverse engineer everything and crack if you want to get even the most basic level of customisability and extensibility that you would expect on any decent computer is genuinely frightening. That device could also be up to absolutely anything behind your back, and you'd be none the wiser staring at the GUI. Just trust apple. Or ask somebody who has been prodding around in there with a sharp screwdriver.

Neither Adobe nor Apple have an entirely ideal character for the relationship to have worked. Adobe own a shedload of patents when it comes to the maths behind image processing technology. Adobe Postscript is built into OSX, comes from NeXT. Mr Jobs lost his rag with Adobe when Adobe forced Apple programmers to work on the code related to PostScript in some sort of high security bunker, and wouldn't let them take away anything but binaries. This made the development work a massive hassle. The Apple programmers also suggested that a lot of the code was hidden out of shame rather than out of protectionism. Adobe's real strength is legalised monopolies on basic image processing technology, they've owned it since they turned over Paintbox's patents on alpha blending of pixels.

Been using Apple & Adobe products as my day to day workhorse stuff for over 20 years. Adobe used to be just as bad as the other software firms for generally mean behaviour, but they did write hand-optimised C++, and every year they'd raise the bar with features that you actually need. Each new version would save you weeks in a month.

Post-internet, whole different ballgame. Different setup, $bns at stake now. Land grab for the new ultra-consumerised computer technology. The good thing about consumers is that you can subject them to abuse, they get a yea or nay decision. Do you want what we're giving you?

These sorts of computer industry companies used to be toolmakers for the graphics industry.

Now they're supplying the communications technology for everything. Consumables plugged into every industry in the world. That sort of power is a corrupting influence.

It was a security issue and still is because it hasn't been addressed. Being aple to run some demos isn't an end-user benefit so it's unknown risk vs. dubious benefit.

Java is disabled by default and no longer installed by default. Kind of undercuts your point.

As for Adobe's tools — no-one I know is using any of them and Adobe's drive to subscription pricing has huge numbers of people figuring out how not to use their other — undeniablly excellent — products. But hey, I'm no "ubercoder".

Toniol, fair enough - I wasn't aware of Java being disabled. Java is one of the languages I am cursed to have to use in my day job so I could have well enabled it after an OS upgrade without really thinking about it as I am running various versions on my Mac.

Adobe's new pricing model is a pain in the neck for independent developers, but is great for businesses who can invest in the products for the duration of a project. Although if you look at what you get with photoshop, if your job is manipulating images on a commercial basis then it represents great value for money when you look at it's batch processing features. The same goes for Illustrator. I've tried all the alternatives for both and nothing else cuts the mustard so to speak. Overall, I think that businesses are happier with Adobe's new licensing model - it's easier to manage in terms of cash flow if nothing else.

Despite what I say I hate Java applets - mainly because I've had to deal with them in the bad old days of juggling Netscape and IE3-6. But I like to think of myself as a libertarian, and I think it is sad the industry is gradually binning client side Java simply because I think the benefits out weight the hassles of keeping it secure. Maybe the Java story would be different had Sun open sourced it before selling themselves to Oracle.

FYI, you can get personal about someone's handle on a forum - but that is descending into mindless mud slinging. I won't lower myself to bite on that and retort. But I can assure you, if I so desired I could inject a level of poison into my words that would probably knock you off your perch. Please don't get into a slagging match - this is a technical forum about technical things. Just because we disagree on a technical argument it doesn't mean we need to throw insults around. Ubercoder is my handle because I was being ironic when submitting a technical enquiry to Apple. Although I use a number of programming languages on a daily basis, I am no master of any one language so I am not Uber in any language. I've been programming computers for about 30 years and think that in the evolution of languages, web development is dragging things down to the lowest common denominator - Javascript.

I make no bones about the excellence of Adobe's technology, but I think their pricing model is a mistake. Most people use only a tiny fraction of their software's capabilities and when a $30 product does all you need (and often does it better than Adobe does) you've got a big problem. (The example I'm thinking of is Acorn which has far better filters than Photoshop — the fact that is lacks HDR support, color spaces, etc. won't impact most casual users.)

I think Flash and Acrobat are a disaster. (PDF is fine, but Acrobat not so much.)

I've been coding as long as you and I don't think Javascript is a bad language at all. It's not as nice as Python or Ruby, but it's far better than many alternatives including Java, Perl, and PHP, and you can code the entire stack in it. The DOM APIs are brutal, but that's not Javascript's fault. (Flash's AS3 APIs are worse, and you can't blame a standards committee and competing vendors and implementation for that fiasco.)

I avoided Javascript for a long time, but of the viable options, I think it's pretty darn good.

Apple really does need to activate WebGL in iOS Safari. I just bought an iPad Air and saw this in the news today.

http://newsdesk.si.edu/releases/smithsonian-releases-3-d-collection-and-launches -new-3-d-explorer

You can't imagine how disappointing it was to see this modern browser showing an error message when I visited the site.

http://3d.si.edu

The notion that WebGL as a web platform would impact the iOS AppStore is simply a whole lot of nonsense.

What people love about the AppStore is that, it's a reliable place to search and download all the apps you ever need.

iOS already allows bookmarking web pages to your home screen (Add to HomeScreen shortcut).

That doesn't mean that has impacted AppStore in any way..

People do resort and always will keep looking at the AppStore for there games.

They won't do a google search find a WebGL game and have it added to there home screen as a shortcut.

So it's silly or rather stupid to think WebGL as a platform could threaten the AppStore in anyway. It simply wont.