This past April, some of the most creative web developers out there showed us what they could do with Web Workers in the April Dev Derby contest. After looking through the entries, our expert judges–James Padolsey, Janet Swisher, Maire Reavy, and Randell Jesup–decided on three winners and two runners-up.

Not a contestant? There are other reasons to be excited. Most importantly, all of these demos are completely open-source, making them wonderful lessons in the exciting things you can do with Web Workers today.

The Results

Winners

• First place: Zen photon garden by newcomer scanlime
• Second place: Hot-cold Typing ! by newcomer Arun Kumar
• Third place: Photo editor by the always impressive Ondřej Žára

Runners-up

• Fractal Explorer by newcomer calvin
• Professor Sudoku by newcomer tleunen

April was the month of the newcomer. If you have ever doubted your ability to make a difference on the web, just look at these results and think again. As always, it was difficult to name just a few winners, so please join me in congratulating all of our competitors for making the web a more exciting and a more responsive place.

Want to get a head start on an upcoming Derby? We are now accepting demos related to WebGL (June) and the File API (July). Head over to the Dev Derby to get started.

Further reading

• How to Spread The Word About Your Code
• Optimizing your JavaScript game for Firefox OS
• BrowserQuest – a massively multiplayer HTML5 (WebSocket + Canvas) game experiment