NaCl enabled in the Chrome Beta

Native Client (NaCl) has been shipping with Google Chrome for a while now, but it wasn't enabled by default. It has just been enabled in the Beta channel which means it'll hit the stable channel in about 6 weeks or so.

For those that don't know, NaCl is a plugin that runs native code in the browser. For instance, C/C++ code compiled against NaCl will run sandboxed in the browser, and the Pepper library allows your program and the browser to communicate.

I have a bunch of little games I wrote in C that I'd like to port. Last I heard, NaCl had an SDL port, but most of my games are written with Allegro so I'm hoping someone ports that soon if they hadn't already.

http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/08/building-better-web-apps-with-new.html

>>20,23
http://code.google.com/games/technology-nacl.html
Native Client is a sandboxing system. It runs code in a virtual environment where all OS calls are intercepted by the NaCl runtime. This has two benefits. First, it enhances security by preventing untrusted code from making dangerous use of the operating system. Second, because OS calls are virtualized, NaCl code is OS-independent. You can run the same binary executable on MacOS, Linux, and Windows.
But syscall virtualization by itself wouldn't be as secure as Javascript, because clever hackers can always find ways to exit the sandbox. NaCl's real contribution is a software verification system that scans each executable module before it runs. The verifier imposes a set of constraints on the program that prevent the code from exiting the sandbox. This security comes at a relatively small performance price, with NaCl code generally running at about 95% the speed of equivalent compiled code.