Uno Platform WebAssembly applications and Azure Static Web Apps

This week, the Azure Static Web Apps service came out of preview. I was honored with the opportunity to create an article that shows you how to create an Azure Static Web App and link it to a GitHub repository containing an Uno Platform WebAssembly application.

This week there was an announcement that the Azure Static Web Apps service came out of preview.

As the name implies, Azure Static Web Apps give you a way to host static web apps and it comes with many features including global distribution of your content and free SSL certificates to name a couple.

Static web apps are applications where all the work happens in the browser and the app is decoupled from server-side code. Because an Uno Platform WebAssembly application is all client-side, it's a static web app and can take advantage of the Azure Static Web Apps service.

I was honored with the opportunity to create an article that expands on some documentation that the Uno Platform already had on Azure Static Web Apps. In the article, I walk you through creating a GitHub repository, creating an Azure Static Web App, and then linking the two together. Then you create an Uno Platform WebAssembly application, check it into your repository, and see the Azure Static Web App automatically detect the change and deploy your new code.

The article can be found here: "Hosting Uno Platform WebAssembly apps on Azure Static Web Apps"

From ConFoo to deploying web applications with Docker

The story of how discovering Docker helped me create the demos for my ConFoo 2021 presentation about the WebAssembly System Interface (WASI). Then the continued learning about Windows containers resulting in my latest Uno Platform article about Deploying C# web applications with Docker.

In 2020, ConFoo opened a call for papers for their February 2021 conference. I submitted several proposals and was pleased to find out in January 2021 that one of them had been accepted.

The talk was going to be about the WebAssembly System Interface (WASI). I knew what I wanted to talk about but I wanted a couple demos that were more real-world than the typical 'hello world' style. I had an idea for the applications I wanted to write but, to write them, I needed to compile some C libraries. Unfortunately, I was having some difficulties getting things set up on Windows.

My first thought for a workaround was to set up a Linux virtual machine but I was curious if there was another way. One thought that crossed my mind was, can Docker help here?

Docker

I had seen Docker demonstrated at a couple user group events but I hadn't used it myself so I needed to get up to speed quickly. Thankfully, I found the following YouTube video that not only explained the Docker theory but also walked through several examples that I was able to follow along with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c-iBn73dDE

After watching the video, I started looking though the images on Docker Hub and discovered that there's a Docker image for the Emscripten SDK. This is useful to me for a couple of reasons:

 
• I prefer to have Emscripten use the versions of the tools it installed rather than a different version on my machine just in case the changes impact things when compiling a module. Being in a container, all the tools Emscripten needs are in the container with it allowing me to adjust the tools on my machine as needed.
• I often switch between versions of Emscripten to test different things. Having an image for each version I need makes things a lot easier. Sometimes I've had to uninstall a version of Emscripten before being able to install the next one. Now, I just need to pull and run the image with the version I need.

In the end, I created a Docker image derived from an Emscripten image and was able to build the demos I wanted for my ConFoo talk.

A few days before the ConFoo conference started, I was talking with the Uno Platform team about Docker. I thought Docker might be useful for C# developers for one-click deployment because I saw on Docker Hub that there was an image with IIS (Internet Information Services).

An article about Docker

After the conference was over, I started looking into Docker from a C# perspective. Unfortunately, every time I tried to build a Windows Docker image, I'd get errors. I spent a number of evenings reading about Windows containers and trying different things but kept spinning my wheels.

I learned a lot about Windows containers in the process but I felt a little dumb when I ran across an article that explained my problem. It turns out that you can't create Linux and Windows containers at the same time. You need to switch Docker Desktop to use one or the other and I was trying to create a Windows container while configured for Linux.

Today, I'm pleased to announce that my latest article "Deploying C# Web Applications with Docker" has been published on the Uno Platform's blog. The article walks you through building an image with IIS and .NET Core, publishing it to a private registry, pulling the image, and running the container.

The State of WebAssembly - 2020 and 2021

The State of WebAssembly – 2020 and 2021. In this article, I show you the current state of WebAssembly by looking at the big events of 2020 and then try to predict where I think things are going in 2021.

With the start of a new year, it's common to reflect on what happened over the past year and plan for the upcoming year.

In this article, I'll give you a quick overview of what WebAssembly and WASI are. Then I'll look at the state of WebAssembly in 2020 and tell you where I see things going this year.

The article can be found here: The State of WebAssembly - 2020 and 2021

WebAssembly threads arriving on Android devices

WebAssembly threads arrive on Android devices! Chrome for Android (version 88) was released with the SharedArrayBuffer enabled which means you can now use WebAssembly threads on your Android phones and tablets!

This week, Chrome for Android (version 88) was released and will become available on Google Play over the next few weeks. With this release, the SharedArrayBuffer has been re-enabled which means you'll be able to use WebAssembly threads on your Android phones and tablets!

To enable the SharedArrayBuffer, you need to specify the Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy (COOP) and Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy (COEP) response headers. Because of the COEP response header, if you include resources from another domain that you trust, you'll need to include the crossorigin attribute with those links.

In July, I wrote an article that walks you through returning the response headers, using the crossorigin attribute, and using WebAssembly threads to convert a user-supplied image to greyscale. You can find my article here: https://cggallant.blogspot.com/2020/07/webassembly-threads-in-firefox.html

Although the article talks about Firefox because it was the first browser to require the new response headers, the content of the article applies to Chrome for Android too.

The response headers will be needed for use with Chrome desktop in the near future (version 91). Safari will require them as well so it's a good idea to update your server response headers with these values if you currently use, or plan to use, the SharedArrayBuffer.

ConFoo Online 2021

I am very pleased to announce that I'll be speaking at ConFoo Online 2021! To flow with the conference theme, I titled my talk "Joining forces to free WebAssembly from the browser".

I am very pleased to announce that I'll be speaking at ConFoo Online 2021!

As a fan of Star Wars, the organizer decided that this year's conference theme will be "a new hope" because of COVID-19 and the feeling that the world needs hope that things will improve. To flow with this theme, I titled my talk "Joining forces to free WebAssembly from the browser".

In this talk you'll learn about the WebAssembly System Interface proposal (WASI) that defines a standard for using WebAssembly outside the browser in a secure way. You'll see several examples including interacting with a WebAssembly module from your C# code and at the command line.

The conference will be virtual this year and will take place from February 22nd to 26th. You can find the full list of sessions here: https://confoo.ca/en/yul2021/sessions

Hope to see you there.