An Overview of WebAssembly

Abstract

In this presentation, we will give an overview of the capabilities of WebAssembly and how it can be employed for further Web development. Traditionally, client side web development mainly makes use of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and JavaScript libraries such as Bootstrap. WebAssembly and Blazor makes it possible to take advantage of comprehension from high level programming languages, such as C#,  into the web development environment.

   There are many benefits that come with using WebAssembly and therefore high level programming languages in client-side Web development, such as ease of development and high performance of web applications. WebAssembly takes advantage of current hardware capabilities to ensure the best speeds possible. Another benefit is that it provides client-side security. This is one of the weaknesses of JavaScript. WebAssembly provides better security than JavaScript by acting as both the backend and frontend.

   Currently four of the major browsers are supporting WebAssembly: Chrome, Safari, FireFox, and Edge.  We envision WebAssembly will gain more popularity in client-side web development in the near future.