| Vladimir Vukićević | |
| Birth Date: | 29 April 1979 |
| Occupation: | Computer Science |
| Known For: | Major technological contributions to the Mozilla Firefox web browser, WebGL |
Vladimir Vukićević (born 29 April 1979), is a Serbian-born American software engineer who has worked on many open source projects. He is known mostly for his work on open-source graphics libraries, including those used in the Mozilla project, and for being the creator of WebGL.
In 2006, Vukićević began work on a prototype OpenGL 3D context for the canvas HTML element, which he called Canvas 3D.[1] This work led to the creation of a "Accelerated 3D on the Web" working group within the Khronos Group in order to create a royalty-free standard API for OpenGL and OpenGL ES 2.0 capabilities,[2] which produced the WebGL specification.
In 2008, Vukićević publicly criticized Apple for using private interfaces in the Safari web browser to improve its performance, leaving third-party applications such as Firefox without solutions for similar performance problems.[3]
Vukićević made many important contributions to Firefox Mobile/Fennec, including an ARM backend for the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine[4] and the initial port of Fennec to Android.[5]
Vukićević also co-authored (with Stuart Parmenter) the APNG specification in 2004.
Vukićević served as the chair of the Khronos WebGL Working Group,[6] and has worked as Director of Engineering for Mozilla until 2017[7] where he created a prototype OpenGL 3D context in Canvas which became WebGL.[8]
He now works as Senior Software Engineer for Emerging Technologies at Unity Technologies.[9] In 2019, he was the company's team leader on Project Tiny, a technology to create light-weight games for the mobile industry based on WebGL and WebAssembly.[10]