What is WebGL

WebGL is an API for 3D graphics on the Web. Historically, several browser vendors including Mozilla, Opera, and Google have worked on separate experimental 3D APIs for JavaScript. Today, WebGL is progressing along a path toward standardization and wide availability across HTML5 browsers. The standardization process is taking place with browser vendors and

The Khronos Group, the body responsible for OpenGL, a cross-platform 3D drawing standard created in 1992. OpenGL, currently at specification version 4.0, is widely used in gaming and computer-aided design applications as a counterpart and competitor to Microsoft’s Direct3D. 

 You get a 2D drawing context from a canvas element by calling getContext("2d") on the element. Unsurprisingly, this leaves the door open for additional types of drawing contexts. WebGL also uses the canvas element, but through a 3D context. Current implementations use experimental vendor prefixes (moz-webgl, webkit-3d, etc.) as the arguments to the getContext() call. In a WebGL-enabled build of Firefox, for example, you can get a 3D context by calling getContext("moz-webgl") on a canvas element. The API of the object returned by such a call to getContext() is different from the 2D canvas equivalent, as this one provides OpenGL bindings instead of drawing operations. Rather than making calls to draw lines and fill shapes, the WebGL version of the canvas context manages textures and vertex buffers.