Google has released an experimental build of Chromium that includes an integrated Dart language runtime. The browser, nicknamed Dartium, is being made available as a technical preview for those who want to see how the Dart virtual machine works in a browser.
Google launched Dart, a language for structured web programming in October 2011. Now the Dart team has released binaries (initially for Mac and Linux with Dartium for Windows billed as coming soon) that integrate the Dart VM into Chromium. This enables devs to run Dart programs directly on the Dart VM in Chromium and avoid a separate compilation step. The idea is that these programs will take advantage of the VM's faster performance and lower startup latency.
Chromium is the open source version of the Chrome browser so installing Dart into Chromium is a good way of testing it out before adding it to Chrome.
According to the Google blog, this is another step forward for the open source "batteries included" Dart platform. However, as a technology preview Dartium should not be used for day-to-day browsing. After more testing and developer feedback, the team plans to include the Dart VM in Chrome.
Having Dart built into the Google Chrome browser would be a significant advantage for the new language, but it would also single Chrome out as "non-standard". What really matters to the future of the language is to get it adopted by other browsers, and this is only going to be possible if Google manages to get it adopted as a standard. The alternative is to continue of make use of the Dart-to-JavaScript compiler and to treat JavaScript as the assembler of the HTML5 world.
Of course, there are some who think that the problems with JavaScript are minor and we don't really need a complete overhaul of a class-based Java clone like Dart.
Microsoft has donated more than 400 pages of JavaScript reference materials to the Web Platform Docs project to fill a need for reference documentation on this topic.
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