When I first got onto the Internet, nearly every page I came across had a little image at the bottom saying "Best Viewed in Netscape Navigator". Since I was using Netscape, everything worked fine and I didn't care. Some time later, I began to see images saying "Best viewed in Internet Explorer". Everything still worked fine, so I still didn't care... but as time went on, more of those images popped up, and the pages they appeared on began to look much, much scrappier in Netscape than they did in Explorer. While most of them still worked, more or less, Explorer made a noticeable improvement.
So, three cheers to Explorer for defeating Netscape and improving client-side development for everybody, right? Find a web-developer who still has to work with IE6 and ask them what they think.
Right now, Dart is freely-licensed and available to everybody, but who can contribute to it? Who will be allowed to veto compatibility-breaking changes? What happens if Apple announces some new hardware platform, and then Google coincidentally decides that supporting that platform in the Dart VM is no longer a priority, refuses to accept patches for it, and later refactorings happen to make it very difficult to maintain outside the official tree? What if the Dart VM becomes strategically important like Android, and current releases are only available to approved partners?
Sure, it's very unlikely that all those things would happen, and fairly unlikely that even one of them would: up until now, Google has stuck pretty close to the "do no evil" thing. But if we stick with openly, collaboratively created technologies, those things are impossible, and "impossible" is better than "unlikely" in my book.
If Dart were some kind of server-side thing Google wanted to use to increase the responsiveness of their sites, or something else internal to their systems, I wouldn't care — they're allowed to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own servers. It's only because the value proposition of Dart is "give Google an inherent advantage of control over the Web, and in exchange you will get shiny things" that I'm concerned. There'll always be more shiny things, but (so far) there's only one Web.
"So, three cheers to Explorer for defeating Netscape and improving client-side development for everybody, right"
Abso-friggin-lutely! You should be thanking Microsoft and Internet Explorer for upping everyone's game. They're the ones who introduced XmlHttpRequest. You knoww, "ajax"?
It's their browser and they can do what they want with it. If you don't like it, don't use it. If everyone else likes it though, tough luck for you. Go build your own browser and language and drum up your own support for it. All of this political correctness is a bunch of bull.
Must some historical fact or pattern of facts be "all good" or "all bad"? Grow up!
Microsoft added XHR to IE when they gave Java the boot in a spat with Sun, in order to keep Outlook Web Express in working order in IE. Was that "all good"? Clearly not for Sun or Java!
The browser wars phase I had no winners. Yes, IE's DHTML innovations such as innerHTML were a win, and Netscape should have agreed to implement and standardize them. No, the long IE6 stagnation and legacy were Not Good.
Wow, really? Grow up? Nobody said it was all good for everyone. I made a counter-point that was clearly as balanced as the original point.
Anyway, it really depends on your point of view. Personally I love the IE6 stagnation and other failures that affect the web such as the epic lameness of Javascript. Why? I think the whole platform sucks and I'm glad to see it fail and push people to build better solutions.
"Abso-friggen-lutely" on top of "three cheers" lacks qualification about the thing you cheered being less than good for anyone. You were abso-friggen-lutist.
Anyway, the open web standards are not failing. Dart is not a clearly better solution. I get your point about XHR, but do try to take mine about the whole history being a mixed bag, including what IE did. We can do better.
georgemcbay basically said [why shouldn't Google do what they want with their browser?], to which thristian replies [because...Microsoft]. I think that's a bullshit argument, especially since there's nothing about Dart that threatens to take away anyone's freedom to continue using Javascript or whatever else comes along.
I gave a bullshit reply to make a point; let's call it hyperbole. Of course I know that it was a mixed bag for everyone. Some good things did come out of it though, IE6 is almost gone and those good things are still here (and they've evolved). Evolution is slow and life itself IS indeed a mixed bag. Business is WAR!!
Anyway, I love, love, LOVE the fact that people are working on giving us lowly blub programmers a choice. :)
EDIT: Didn't realize who I was talking to, so let me be really clear that I have a LOVE/HATE relationship with all things in tech, including Javascript!
I have mixed feelings about JS and most software, but moreso JS than, e.g., Unix (BSD kernel code in the late '80s, not to date myself too much).
People seem to think I have some big ego investment in JS, but it's this thing I did in a hurry, but with a purpose that caught on when the web was young and growing fast. JS is not done, yet it will be hard to replace.
JS is easier to extend than some here claim (and as my recent comments have noted, not all the parties on the record asserting that it's hard to "fix" are truly giving it their best effort). As with most web standards, you can't remove stuff predictably, but new and more winning extensions can help retire worse old forms.
Business may be WAR but the modern browser era is marked by claims of peace and openness and standards conformance. So while Dart, and (I joke; I hope this doesn't happen) matching novelties from Apple ("Flechette") and Microsoft ("Javelin"), will take some attention off the standards, the forces operating in favor of standards will probably manage to keep JS evolving.
I actually miss some of the Googlers who have worked in TC39, or around the edges, but who are now full time on Dart or other projects. It seems like a lost opportunity to me, but it's Google's call.
So, three cheers to Explorer for defeating Netscape and improving client-side development for everybody, right? Find a web-developer who still has to work with IE6 and ask them what they think.
Right now, Dart is freely-licensed and available to everybody, but who can contribute to it? Who will be allowed to veto compatibility-breaking changes? What happens if Apple announces some new hardware platform, and then Google coincidentally decides that supporting that platform in the Dart VM is no longer a priority, refuses to accept patches for it, and later refactorings happen to make it very difficult to maintain outside the official tree? What if the Dart VM becomes strategically important like Android, and current releases are only available to approved partners?
Sure, it's very unlikely that all those things would happen, and fairly unlikely that even one of them would: up until now, Google has stuck pretty close to the "do no evil" thing. But if we stick with openly, collaboratively created technologies, those things are impossible, and "impossible" is better than "unlikely" in my book.
If Dart were some kind of server-side thing Google wanted to use to increase the responsiveness of their sites, or something else internal to their systems, I wouldn't care — they're allowed to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own servers. It's only because the value proposition of Dart is "give Google an inherent advantage of control over the Web, and in exchange you will get shiny things" that I'm concerned. There'll always be more shiny things, but (so far) there's only one Web.