Building Snappy UIs with TypeScript, WebAssembly, and Web Workers
This article explores how to create snappy user interfaces using TypeScript, WebAssembly, and Web Workers. The author discusses a web app that allows users to manipulate audio files in the browser, such as changing the length or marking sections to prefer or avoid. To ensure a responsive experience, the computations are performed client-side using WebAssembly binaries executed within Web Workers. WebAssembly enables developers to use low-level code that runs faster than JavaScript, and AssemblyScript is used in this case to write high-level code in TypeScript and compile it to WebAssembly. The article also explains the use of Web Workers to run the computationally intensive code in a separate thread, preventing the UI from freezing. By leveraging these technologies, developers can create performant and interactive web applications. This approach is particularly useful for applications that require complex computations or data processing.