ongwt.com

Jeff Wilson

One of the things I have discovered since starting to experiment with GWT is that it is missing some key framework support. That is, the basics are there: rich desktop-like widgets, a serviceable RPC mechanism, etc. But some basic support for managing a desktop application, like property binding support, is missing.

Exploring GWT

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Claude Coulombe

After some exploration, we decided to go with GWT (Google Web Toolkit) for our OpenSyllabus project in Montréal. A main argument was that our team is essentially composed of Java developers with little knowledge of JavaScript.

GWT - The right tool for Java men!

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Khun Yee Fung

We put our GWT-based job site (http://www.careercommons.com) in production on Monday. This is a summary of my experience coding the whole thing in GWT. Not sure how useful this is for other people, but here it goes...

My experience of coding a GWT webapp (~900 classes, ~20 GWT modules)

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  Kevin Whinnery

In the world of Rich Internet Applications, there is no shortage of technology choices to compose a user interface. But what tools will give us the best bang for our buck? Here is a look at some heavy hitters and newcomers in the RIA market, including: HTML & AJAX, Rails and Grails, Flex, Silverlight, Curl, GWT, OpenLaszlo, and Appcelerator.

[...]

But before abandoning the browser, we still have options.  A number of emerging frameworks seek to tame the browser and make it a suitable platform for a rich client application.  The biggest fish in this pond is currently Google Web Toolkit (or GWT), which allows developers to write UI code in Java and have it transformed to JavaScript that will run in the browser.  All this with all the development tools and skill sets that exist out in the marketplace today surrounding Java. Sounds great doesn't it?

It sure did to me, until I started to actually write a UI in straight up procedural Java.  I was shocked at the volume of code I had to write to assemble even the most basic UI.  Also, trying to read a collection of Java classes and visualize the structure of the UI was, for me, not an easy task. On top of that, it was unclear to me how a design team would effectively collaborate with a development team, especially when they are speaking different programming languages (Java versus HTML/CSS).  The lack of any kind of markup language to accompany Java in GWT hurts it badly - and the alpha-stage markup language extensions that I see coming out seem all too far away.

[...]

Which RIA Tools Give Us the Best Bang For Our Buck?

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Pieter Coucke

I've used GWT for over half a year now on koopjeszoeker.be. Two weeks ago I decided to stop development with GWT and go with plain HTML and mootools for the autocompleter. I've used mootools already a lot and I'm really getting the hang of it. Why? Why did I spend all this time developing in GWT and why did I decided to stop?

-> SEO, Analytics and Adsense

SEO : I'm currently building a GWT application that is compatible with Google Search Appliance. So I'm pretty sure that it is possible to build search engine compatible applications.

Analytics : Here is a tip from Robert Hanson : GWT / Google Analytics Integration. I have no feedback about this tip.

Adsense : in this area, GWT is in the same troubles than Flash. So, if there is a solution for Flash, there is a solution for GWT : Adsense in Adobe Flash now possible. This solution is a hack. But I'm sure that Google is working on a more supported solution.

 

Why I dumped GWT

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openlandscape

It probably would be a good idea if the GWT compiler reported any long types as warnings. Theres no point having a long that doesn’t really work. It just opens the opportunity for problems like this one.

Good idea.

Google Web Toolkit’s (GWT) Fake Long

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bouwkamp.com

I’ve been working with GWT for more than a year and still think it changed the playing field. Joel Spolsky wrote an article about how GMail can be compared to what happened to Lotus 1-2-3 and that Google should watch out for some SDK that will change the landscape. I think that SDK can be GWT. Here are some lessons I’ve learned.

Lessons learned

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Reinier Zwitserloot :

IE is buggy. __pendingSrc is a GWT-specific workaround. Specifically, if you create 10 image objects, all pointing to the same image, the proper behaviour for the browser is to download this image ONCE.

GWT Work arround

Image source : istockphoto.com

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Daniel Wellman

My team recently encountered an issue with modal dialogs in GWT 1.3.x, which include DialogBox and PopupPanel. When testing in Firefox, we noted that these modal dialogs are truly modal -- you cannot click on any element outside the dialog. However, in Internet Explorer (we tested with version 6), we see not only the visual effects for button clicks, etc. but in some cases actual events are fired.

GWT and ModalDialogs: Not so-modal in Internet Explorer 6

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Kikhil Kothari :

“JavaScript is the assembly language of the Web”. Not only is JavaScript ubiquitous, ... it is an amazingly flexible language that allows one to model multiple type systems and programming styles ... script provides a wealth of building blocks, or high-level instructions, that are well suited to be consumed by a higher-level compiler.

I borrowed the quote from Danny Thorpe's presentation titled "Paradoxes in Web Development" from the Lang.NET '06 conference. I am sure Bruce Johnson and the folks on GWT share similar thoughts.

Nikhil Kothari is an architect on the Web/ASP.NET team at Microsoft, and is primarily responsible for the server controls framework, Atlas (Ajax Framework) framework, and Script# (wikipedia).

Ajax Futures and JavaScript as a Universal Runtime

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