Prefacio

This book is an introduction to computer graphics with an emphasis on applications programming. The first edition, which was published in 1997, was some-what revolutionary in using OpenGL and a top-down approach. Over the succeeding 16 years and 6 editions, this approach han been adopted by most introductory classes in computer graphics and by virtually all the compteing textboks.

The sixth edition reflected the recent major changes in graphics software due to mayor changes in graphics hardware. In particular, the sixth edition was fully shader-based, enabling readers to create applications that could fully exploit the capabilities of modern GPUs. We noted that these changes are also part of OpenGL ES 2.0, which is being used to develop applications for embedded systems and handheld devices, such as cell phones and tablets, and of WebGL, its JavaScript implementation. At the time, we did not anticipate the extraordinary interest in WebGL that began as soon as web browsers became available that support WebGL through HTML5.

As we continued to write our books