Google has been taking it’s Dart programming language quite seriously. Apparently, Google thinks that in the future, the language will come about to play a crucial role for browsers. And as such, Google’s hopes are not that misplaced. Dart has indeed the potential to replace JavaScript one day but that’s still a possibility. To give the developers a true ‘feel’ of how it would feel, Google has released a new version of Chromium browser with Dart virtual machine built within in.
With the help of this new browser with the build in Dart virtual machine, the developers can run Dart codes directly from within the browser. This essentially eliminates one additional step of code compilation which developers had to go through earlier. Google has released this new version of Chromium only for Mac and Linux so far. According to the company, a version for Windows is also on it’s way.
Google is banking heavily on it’s Dart project and is trying to make the language more accessible and useful so that developers can increasingly work on the language. With the help of a Dart-to-JavaScript compiler, Dart can be make run on different legacy browsers too. However, a number of modern applications now directly support the language and don’t even need a compiler to run it.
Google’s more mainstream Chrome browser basically emanated from it’s Chromium project. So we can hope that once Google successfully integrates support for Dart in Chromium, it may soon be coming on Chrome browser too.
You can download the Chromium browser with Dart support right here.
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