Investigating Web3D Topics on StackOverflow: a Preliminary Study of WebGL and Three.js
Abstract. Web3D developers often have to make crucial decisions on which technologies are best for their projects. This work addresses that question through the perspective of community attention and support on the prominent Question & Answer forum that is StackOverflow (SO). For this preliminary study, we focused on (i) WebGL, a key low-level JavaScript API that makes it possible to render 3D graphics in browsers without plugins, and (ii) Three.js, a related higher-level JavaScript library that reuses WebGL and is reputed easier and more intuitive. We considered questions from SO tagged with WebGL or Three.js and extracted all tags used on these questions. Using these, we were able to compare the relative attention (considering the number of questions and views) and support (considering satisfactory answers and how long they take) received by concerns and technologies associated to WebGL and Three.js. Our results suggest that Three.js gets significantly more community attention but less community support than WebGL on SO.