Webworkers and any supported libs/shims

[andrew ennamorato]

Web workers and web sockets are, IMO, the two most interesting changes/additions to the JS/html landscape in a while. (Canvas probably being a close 3rd...)

Unlike web sockets, though, web workers don't seem to have been given as much love - there aren't a ton of cool demos, there don't seem to be any abstraction libs (i.e. socket.io), etc.

Are web workers still too immature/unsupported? Is an abstraction library (I'm thinking thread-pool style libs available in other langs, or maybe even some sort of actor model for passing data across workers) unnecessary?

At any rate, glad to see a book out on the subject!

[Ido Green]

I agree Andrew...
It would be great to see more:
* Libraries that making the developer life easier.
* Cool demo to what can be done with web workers today and transferrable objects.
My little contribution is with this set of examples (from the book) - http://greenido.github.com/Web-Workers-Examples-/

As for "Are web workers still too immature/unsupported?"
I would say that our current state is much better and in the near future all the major browsers will have them: http://caniuse.com/#feat=webworkers

Any comments/ideas to new demos are most welcome!

[andrew ennamorato]

Cool! When in doubt, check the author's github for cool demos, haha.

I think a neat demo might somehow tie in something like D3 or Miso (http://misoproject.com/dataset/). Sorta like what Jos Dirksen did here: http://www.smartjava.org/content/threejs-tutorial-example-webgl-canvas-and-webworkers. And maybe tie in CrossFilter some how too: http://square.github.com/crossfilter/

I dunno, just random thoughts there.

Speaking of pools, Jos has a good post on his own little threadpool lib too: http://www.smartjava.org/content/html5-easily-parallelize-jobs-using-web-workers-and-threadpool

I think your book and more demos will be great (and help my own understanding of how to use these, too). So if anyone else has any good links, feel free to gather 'em up in this thread.

[Ido Green]

Sounds good!
Thank you for the links - I'll check them over the weekend.