Changes

The introduction of the <canvas> tag into the HTML5 specification allowed Processing to be ported to JavaScript, thus enabling users to run 2D sketches within the browser without additional plug-ins. At the time when porting began, there was no plug-in free method of delivering 3D content. This limited Processing.js to its 2D functions. WebGL, A JavaScript API that is based on OpenGL ES 2.0, is now being implemented by Firefox, Chrome and Safari. It is now has become a viable candidate for use in Processing.js to render 3D sketches. Additionally, since WebGL closely matches OpenGL which is used by Processing, it substantially aided the porting processof the 3D Processing functions was relatively straight forward.

===Differencesbetween OpenGL and WebGL===The matter of porting Processing (which uses OpenGL/*1.x?? if it was opengl 2.0 it would have been even easier right?*/) was simplified because the WebGL interface is similar that of OpenGL, but there are a number of differences between the interfaces. Arguably, the The single largest difference between WebGL and OpenGL 1.x is that like OpenGL ES 2.0, the fixed-function pipeline was been removed. Because of this, not all Processing source code could not be ported directly. Instead, user-defined vertex and fragment shaders were necessary to write for lighting operations. Since some shapes in Processing aren't lit and others were, multiple shaders were written. One shader exists for lit objects such as boxes and spheres, another less complex shader was written for unlit objects such as lines and points.

Because typed arrays are only available for pre-release browsers, they cannot currently be used in 2D sketches. Once they become implemented in browsers, a significant amount of the Processing.js code base can make use of these structures, increasing performance throughout the library. ===Specification Changes and Browser Inconsistencies===As the specification is concurrently implemented in different browsers, several inconsistencies between browsers have appeared. These range from minor issues, such as Minefield and Chrome/Chromium return "function" while WebKit returns "object" when the type of a typed array is queried. Another is the way WebGL's readPixels() function is implemented. This function isn't used extensively in the library itself/* andor, but it is used mike said its in the Processing.js reference testing framework. ===Problems===WebGL provides a close match to OpenGL for incorporating 3D into Processing.js, but is it does present some issues when trying to port over code. There are interface differences, changes to the interface are common, and some functionality isn't available at all such as point smoothing.???*/