Web worker

Web Workers
Status	Living Standard
Year started	3 April 2009
First published	3 April 2009
Organization	W3C; WHATWG;
Committee	WHATWG
Editors	Ian Hickson
Domain	Multithreaded programming; Multiprocessing;
Website	Retired standard: https://www.w3.org/TR/2021/NOTE-workers-20210128/; Latest standard: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/workers.html;

A web worker, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), is a JavaScript script executed from an HTML page that runs in the background, independently of scripts that may also have been executed from the same HTML page.^[1] Web workers are often able to utilize multi-core CPUs more effectively.^[2]

The W3C and WHATWG envision web workers as long-running scripts that are not interrupted by scripts that respond to clicks or other user interactions. Keeping such workers from being interrupted by user activities should allow Web pages to remain responsive at the same time as they are running long tasks in the background.

The web worker specification is part of the HTML Living Standard.^[1]

^ ^a ^b Web Workers, WHATWG, retrieved 2 January 2023
^ "HTML Living Standard". Html.spec.whatwg.org. 30 January 2017. Retrieved 31 January 2017.

[WHATWG-1] Web Workers, WHATWG, retrieved 2 January 2023

[2] "HTML Living Standard". Html.spec.whatwg.org. 30 January 2017. Retrieved 31 January 2017.

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