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How easy and quick is it to build a simple project.

Difficult. Virtually no documentation and took me a lot of time to get started.

How will the JavaScript communicate with the Native Backend.

Manually expose functions from C++ and use V8 api to bridge the functions from C++ to JS

How are JS objects in JavaScript sent to the backend, and how easy is it to read them? Do they need to be encoded purely into JSON as an intermediary?

V8 Objects

Can the JS make async HTTP requests to any other web server without cross domain restrictions?

Webkit security flags are turned on. Would have to override the security flags or call HTTP from backend and send the result to JS

Is there a way to have synchronous calls to the backend without using AJAX all the time to talk to the backend.

V8 api to bridge native C++ functions to JS

Does the system need to be recompiled when backend changes?

Yes

Does system need to be recompiled when frontend code (JS/CSS/HTML) changes?

Yes. No way to reload the code like a browser.

If no recompile necessary is there a way to reload a specific view without restarting the app.

Recompile required

Is there a webkit/firefox type inspector built in to debug the javascript.

Yes. Webkit.

Is it possible to debug the backend code easily.

Yes but very difficult.

What platforms will this support?

Supports Windows, Mac and linux

Can you cross compile? meaning can you build an app for OSX while on Linux, etc...

No. In windows it needs VS to compile and Mac requires XCode

How easy is it to distribute apps built with this platform. Will this give a standard system like DMG, binary tarball (linux) and installer (windows) which users are used to.

Since it uses the native libraries to compile like XCode in ma, use XCode to package and sign.

If you need to update the application is there a straight forward path to do so.

No.

Does this provide cross platform library to access lower level hardware like the sound card, etc (not using HTML5 audio) in case someone needs to build a more complex system.

Use native packages to access system features

Will this work on chromebooks?

No.