My favourite Web API - Webgl

Justin Mayhew — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 22:34:24 +0000

If you’re anything like I was a year ago, you might never have heard of WebGL. It’s definitely not something you need in your day-to-day life as a frontend developer. But if you’re interested in doing some really cool things on the web — the kind that make you go “oh wow” (seriously, Google WebGL websites if you want to see what I mean) — and you’re willing to face a pretty steep learning curve, then you can create effects that CSS alone simply can’t achieve.

So, let’s start from the top. WebGL is an API that lets you write low-level code that runs directly on the GPU. It allows you to create both 2D and 3D graphics using the full power of your graphics card. This means things that would be impossible with CSS — like rendering millions of particles smoothly — become entirely possible.

That idea of rendering millions of particles smoothly is what first pulled me into WebGL. I was working on a website and wanted to add a flashy effect — a title made up of thousands of tiny dots that moved away from your mouse cursor. It looked awesome, but it lagged. And I don’t do lag. If it drops frames on a budget phone, I don’t want it. That performance obsession is what led me to WebGL.

A <canvas> element in HTML can have two kinds of “contexts”: 2D and WebGL. The 2D context is much more intuitive — you can draw a line between two points, fill a rectangle, and you’re done. It’s simple, and powerful enough for many projects. Think of it as the JavaScript of graphics APIs: high-level and friendly, but abstracting away all the tricky low-level details at the cost of raw performance.

WebGL, on the other hand, is like talking directly to the hardware. It gives you the control (and responsibility) to manage how things are drawn, and in return, it rewards you with incredible performance.

What I love most about WebGL is that it lets you access that low-level power from the comfort of JavaScript. As a web developer, graphics programming always felt like something outside my world — something reserved for C++ or game engines. But with WebGL, I could explore it without leaving the environment I’m comfortable in.

If you’re a web developer who’s curious about making games, interactive visuals, or just taking your websites to the next level, WebGL is absolutely worth exploring. It’s not easy, but the moment you see something you built moving at 60 FPS — powered by your own shaders — it’s all worth it.

As I touched on it's not easy to learn from my experience - debugging Webgl can be very hard. I am thinking to write some basic tutorials in the hope they will help someone.

DEV Community: Justin Mayhew

My favourite Web API - Webgl