Chrome Native Client

Very interesting feature in the latest chrome. Supports running C/C++ code natively in the browser for Google Chrome!

code.google.com/chrome/nativeclient

Not sure if Construct 2 would support this somehow via plugin, but it sounds pretty darn cool.

Looks very cool, but don't you think Google have gone over the top here?

Javascript compiles to machine code so usually is 2-3x slower than C++ code - and will speed up. So unless your javascript app is using more than 33-50% of the CPU, there won't be any performance gain - it's fast enough. And Mozilla and Google are working to speed it up even more!

Looks very cool, but don't you think Google have gone over the top here?

Yeah, it is definitely over the top...I think Google is doing it more for the wow factor. Not sure how secure it will end up being.

Then again, if all browsers supported this, you could code whatever you wanted and wouldn't have to worry about if something like a specific audio format was supported by a specific browser or the HTML 5 spec. And hey, the extra speed certainly wouldn't hurt!

It is a shame that it's chrome only though.

I think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. Browsers could all support the same audio format without this! It's just politics stopping that. Javascript is truly "write once run anywhere" - C++ is portable, but different platforms (32-bit x86, 64-bit x86, ARM) change the features slightly, which can cause crashes and bugs if you're not careful. It's perfectly possible to code taking that in to account, but it doesn't even need to cross your mind in JS. I don't think it'll take off.