When Qt 5.11 was released last week, a technology preview of Qt for WebAssembly was released along with it, allowing developers to run Qt applications directly inside the browser window.
WebAssembly is a brand-new technology that represents a paradigm shift in web development. Leveraging this technology web developers can write high-performance applications that can run directly in the browser. A common misconception about WebAssembly is that it will eventually replace JavaScript, but the fact is that it’s intended to be used alongside JavaScript.
WebAssembly is nothing but a bytecode format which is executed in a web browser. This allows an application to be deployed to a device with a compliant web browser without going through any explicit installation steps. WebAssembly is now supported by all major web browsers as a binary format for allowing executable code in web pages that is nearly as fast as native machine code.
Qt uses Emscripten, an open source LLVM to JavaScript compiler. Emscripten complies Qt applications so they can run in a web browser from a web server. Deploying applications on multiple platforms is a tedious task, with WebAssembly developers need to just compile and deploy on a web server for any platform that has a browser.
This feature comes in handy especially for enterprise users with multiple clients who are using different platforms. These enterprises can use Qt for WebAssembly to compile their Qt or Quick app and deploy once.
Adding support for WebAssembly is a huge step forward for Qt in order to become a truly cross-platform framework. The project is currently in beta and has been released as a technology preview. You can visit the official Qt blog for more information.
