emscripten & BananaBread (3D tech... not the food)

[CuteAlien]

There's the browser-cache which might keep stuff around for longer (depending on browser and user-settings). And I guess you could make a usual desktop installer to install the data and then use the browser to access that local data. And maybe there's inofficial browser extensions. Don't know if there are more ways - I'm not a web programmer.

[Mel]

Then again, installing a complement offline, why not the whole program? Although having WebGL around is something great, i hardly see the browser to play games. I think it is best to use webGL as an enhanced flash, even if flash itself already has 3D support.

[CuteAlien]

The advantage of the browser is that it runs on all platforms. No native code needed. And it's secure to run unlike native code (although the moment you're allowed to run an installer it's certainly no longer safe).

[Mel]

Hence, it is a good idea to think of it as a flash that doesn't need any more than the browser to run.

[hendu]

See the amount of Flash, Javascript, Java, WebGL, and ActiveX vulnerabilities, and say it again that browsers are secure

(yes, only JS and WebGL affected without plugins. But no playing Runescape, Unity web player, etc then.)

[CuteAlien]

Browsers are more secure than native code. Everyone knows how to access local data with native code. I would have no idea how to do that with someone working with current updated browser (you'd have to find your own so far unknown vulnerability first). And unlike Flash you get an open standard with webgl - I've never even really considered working with Flash (or even seen it as a real part of the web). Java is quite secure with current versions as well - most of the time, but with Oracle controlling it now (and for example making life hard for linux distributions) I've lost my interest in that (also as nice as Runescape was, it rather was a show-case for the features as well as the problems with Java and last I heard they are working on a html-5 client now).