Speeding Up Webamp’s Music Visualizer with WebAssembly

JORDANELDREDGE.COM

Winamp was released more than 20 years ago, and was one of the very first MP3 players available on Windows - I’ve certainly got fond memories of that little media player! Webamp is a web technology (JS, HTML) re-implementation of Winamp that brings this classic piece of software to the browser.

One of the defining features of Winamp was its versatile and programmable visualiser (named Milkdrop), I recall spending many enjoyable hours creating my own ‘trippy’ effects. As part of the Webamp project, this visualisation library has been ported to WebGL. This blog post looks at how this project (Butterchurn!) has started using WebAssembly to provide better performance and security.

A mix of nostalgia, fun visuals, and a genuinely practical use of WebAssembly - what’s not to love?

Microsoft gets serious about WebAssembly

INFOWORLD.COM

I’m not usually a fan of linking to InfoWorld, it’s packed with adverts and tends to only skim the surface when it comes to technology. However, this article, and the level of attention WebAssembly is getting is note-worthy. If you’re interested, turn your ad-blocker on and take a look!

AssemblyScript - HTTP 203

YOUTUBE.COM

In this fun video chat, Surma provides a quick-start on AssemblyScript, a TypeScript-like language that compiles to WebAssembly. Asking important questions such as - is it faster? Smaller? Better? Will it kill JavaScript?

Also, if you take a look in the comments, you’ll see a nice little wasm Easter Egg in there from the Chrome Dev Team.

Atmo Beta-2: New features and a look at what’s next

SUBORBITAL.DEV

It’s great to see further progress on this project which uses WebAssembly at its very core.

hash-wasm

GITHUB.COM

A collection of lightning fast hash functions using hand-tuned WebAssembly binaries.