Google Experiments with JavaScript

Recently, a new browser war has erupted all over the internet, with various browsers making massive improvements in each release to trumpet those made by others. While Firefox certainly ignited this new browser war, Chrome is the one who started the JavaScript war. The first release of Google’s web browser came with a brand new JavaScript engine that was a lot faster than those of its competitors, forcing them to improve their JavaScript performance as well. This whole JS thing has gotten to the heads of the folks at Google, and they’ve created a site for experiments which show off the power of JS.

The website, dubbed Chrome Experiments, is filled with neat and fun little experiments and games that show off the power of JavaScript. “We think JavaScript is awesome. We also think browsers are awesome. Indeed, when we talk about them, we say they are the cat’s meow – which is an American expression meaning AWESOME.” The about page reads, “In light of these deeply held beliefs, we created this site to showcase cool experiments for both JavaScript and web browsers.”

One of the cooler experiments is by Christophe Résigné, who recreated the entire Workbench interface of the original Amiga computer in JavaScript. You can manage windows, launch the CLI and process commands, and yes, he even implemented the draggable desktops feature. Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

Another impressive experiment comes courtesy of Satoshi Ueyama, who created a 3D model of an Apple iPhone-like gadget with sphere environmental mapping technique. It uses JavaScript and Canvas to render the model.

Browser Ball is quite a fun little trick. With it, you can bounce balls back and forth between windows, and have them drop from window to window. Google Gravity is also impressive; it makes all the elements of Google’s homepage drop to the bottom of the browser – and they’re still functional. Monster renders a 3D model of a morphing monster.

They might be just toys, but they do show off the power of JavaScript. Needless to say, you don’t need Chrome to get these to work.

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