Google Dart target: Chrome soon! Other browsers...someday

Posted by Harshad

Google Dart target: Chrome soon! Other browsers...someday

Posted: 17 Dec 2013 06:11 AM PST

Chrome programmer Lars Bak speaking at Google I/O 2013

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Minecraft is one of the most widely used games around these days. So it was notable when the programmer who wrote it, Markus "Notch" Persson, embraced Google's Dart programming language for Web apps.

I love it," Persson tweeted in November, shortly after Google released Dart 1.0.

That's music to the ears of Google developers who created Dart to rewrite the rules of Web programming and, as they see it, to overcome shortcomings of the JavaScript language at the foundation of Web apps today. To fully succeed, though, Google will have to persuade a lot of skeptics to see things the way Notch does.

Google believes Dart speeds up both developers and the programs they write, but skeptics worry that it fragments Web programming and undermines the industry's focus on better JavaScript. So far, it's been a largely academic debate, but that will change in coming months.

That's because Google right now is building Dart technology directly into Chrome. ... [Read more]

Opera updates Coast browser for iOS with music and PDF options

Posted: 17 Dec 2013 04:54 AM PST

Opera Software has finished a new version of its Coast browser, an attempt to get a better foothold on Apple's iOS, with new music and PDF controls.

When a Web page can play music, Coast will indicate that with a graphic-equalizer animation in the page's tab and let people control the music with a lock-screen control. Coast also now offers options for saving PDFs or opening them with other apps, the Norwegian browser company said.

The updated Coast also lets people set a home-screen image. Last, for moving among Web pages, Opera dumped its older buttons and moved to swipe gestures instead.

Opera has moved to Google's Blink browser engine for most of its products, but that software isn't allowed on iOS, so Coast is an attempt to build a new user interface atop the browser engine Apple ships for third-party apps on iOS to use.