Google Dart Update

Google’s Dart has been designed to shore-up JavaScript for large scale programming. Google argues that by tuning up the syntax of JavaScript and borrowing C-like contructs Dart can be made to scale and perform better than JavaScript.. The current version of the Dart Editor:

Note there is no UI objects or Visual Editor for Dart yet
actually outputs JavaScript and runs in the Chrome browser and the Maxthon 3.0 browser but not Firefox, IE, Safari, or Opera. A later build  of the Dart Editor does add more runtime support with more browsers available and a special version of the Chrome browser called Dartium which has the Dart VM and runs Dart webscripts directly in the embedded HTML with no intervening JavaScript.

Documentation

Remarkably for Google. the documentation and introductory Tour of Dart  and the Dart Libraries and API are reasonably good. Perhaps being used to nearly nothing on Google Developers Tools [see Blockly for an example], the expectations are not very high. However, what I was looking for, comparative examples of JavaScript versus Dart code samples are nowhere to be found. Also the Dart  sample code  set is small and does not take advantage of new HTML5 coding aids like SVG and Canvas – instead Dart just replaces them with its own Dart code. I had hoped, since Google has a  HTML5 leadership role,  a tighter integration with HTML5, CSS3, and the new mobile Web. So not only is a  Dart shy a UI and touch set of Objects [no jQuery or Mootools equivalent to be seen]but also tight integration with HTML5 is lacking too[although Google claims it is so].

Experience

So far experience with the 64 bit version of Dart running in Windows 7 with the latest service pack has been mixed. Simple exercises work reasonably well running JavaScript and the Dartium browser, which like Dart itself is Alpha. But more complicated code is can run astray  even in the JavaScript to Chrome or Maxthon browser experience. The example below is typical
:

Also Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, legitimately raises the issue of cross platform adoption of Dart VM by rival browser vendors. He also underlines how JavaScript 6 addresses some of the purported structural issues raised by Google for developing Dart. So this user has called a halt to Dart explorations and will await the next major release. See the News on Dart here for the latest. Although there are rumors of a M1+ version of Dart in the pipeline. In sum, unless committed to Dart await the next level for a better view of where and how well Dart goes.