GPU-Accelerated Internet

I've recently become aware of an exciting trend -- GPU-acceleration for the Internet. Last year, Google started things off with some cool O3D demos, then the WebGL standard got kicked off, and now Microsoft is letting people play around with their Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview. Much of this is still at the hobbyist phase of it's development with alpha and beta code being the norm, but even in it's current state, some of it looks cool and is fun to play with. Here's a list of links for the interested student to try if they want to see where the Internet is headed in the not too distant future.

Google Chromium & O3D Demos

1. Download and install the latest version of Chromium from here
2. Exit your browser and run Chromium
3. Try some of the cool Chrome experiments here
4. Download and install the O3D plugin here
5. Try some of the O3D examples on the samples page or community gallery

IE9 Platform Preview with D2D and SVG demos

1. Download and install the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview from here
2. Exit your browser and run the IE9 Platform Preview
3. Try any of the demos on the IE9 Platform Preview website

Mozilla Minefield (Firefox Beta) WebGL and SVG Demos

1. Download and install the latest version of Minefield from here
2. Once installed, run Minefield, and type "about:config" into the web address window and hit return. You'll be asked to accept some risks. Assuming you do, then
3. Type "webgl" into the "Filter:" window.
4. Double-click "webgl.enabled_for_all_sites" so the value changes to "true."
5. Type "render" into the "Filter:" window.
6. Double-click "gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled" so the value changes to "true."
7. Double-click "mozilla.widget.render-mode," and enter "6."
8. Try some of the WebGL demos from the Demo Repository, or User Contributions pages -- In my experience, many of these don't work on Intel graphics today.
9. Try one or more of these Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) demos: Ball Pool, Balloons, StressTest, AllYourGoogle

I'm keen to hear what you think about all of this. For me, it's exciting to think that the web could be much more animated and dynamic, but it's also clear that this is still in its early-days. Things will have to get simpler and more broadly supported for it to take off and impact us all.