WebGL
What
WebGL is the OpenGL ES 2 / ES 3 API for the web (WebGL 2 = ES 3.0). Shipping in browsers since 2011, it powered the entire first generation of in-browser 3D — Three.js, Babylon.js, Google Maps, Figma's WebGL renderer, the early WebVR demos, the data-viz revolution (deck.gl, regl, Observable), and a thousand "designer/dev" portfolios.
Why It's In The Canon
WebGL is the substrate that taught the design world that the browser could be a real visual medium. Before WebGL, "interactive web design" meant Flash or jQuery animations. After WebGL, it meant generative, immersive, 60fps, scrubbable. The aesthetic vocabulary of 2010s "experience" web design — Awwwards-style sites, agency portfolio reels, the Active Theory school — is downstream of WebGL becoming usable through Three.js.
It's worth canonizing now even as WebGPU rises, because: (a) WebGL is going to remain the compatibility floor for a decade — anything you ship to a broad audience still needs a WebGL fallback; (b) the design idioms it enabled (full-bleed canvas heroes, scroll-driven 3D, particle interactions) are not going away — they just get faster on WebGPU; (c) most of the canonical reference work in design-coded 3D was made in WebGL and reading those source codebases is still how you learn.
Don't write new WebGL projects if you can avoid it. Do learn what it taught the field.
