

Google Web Toolkit  - mwp

I have recently been playing around with Google Web Toolkit and frameworks built on top of that (GWT-Ext and MyGWT in particular). I am curious to hear from anyone who has done something real with these frameworks and what impression it left on them.
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jsjenkins168
I've been working with it a little over a year. Our startup is based heavily
on it and I believe it to be our "secret weapon" relative to our competitors.
Its just that damn good.

Popular I would say it is not, probably because it is java based and just
about everyone hates Java. Once you get over the learning curve and negative
Java bias I think most will discover it is worth it though.

GWT 1.5 is stable enough in the trunk, I actually recommend using that even
though the RC is not out yet (probably late summer at the earliest I've read).
There are instructions on how to build it on the GWT site, its very easy. And
then you can use Java 5 syntax which helps out greatly when dealing a lot with
RPCs.

Also check out gwt-dnd, its a fantastic library which enables drag and drop.
Its leaps and bounds ahead any of the other drag drop libraries, definitely
recommend it. Fred is the guy in charge of it and he is a great resource:
<http://code.google.com/p/gwt-dnd/>

I've been using GWT Widget Library for animations. Its just a simple wrapper
around Scriptaculous libraries. It has some other functionality too which I
have not explored. Animations of existing widgets are super easy though, and
can make your UI far more dynamic.

Haven't visited GWT-Ext in a while, but last I checked it was coming along
pretty well. As far as drag/drop functionality goes though, you will be able
to build more custom implementations with gwt-dnd. GWT-Ext just seemed a bit
"vanilla" to me since it looks a lot like a lot of other Ext sites out there.
We just preferred something that felt more custom, but I guess thats just a
matter of preference.

If you code in Eclipse, I'd recommend checking out GWT Designer plugin from
Instantiations. Unfortunately its like $30, but if you end up doing lots of
coding it will be well worth it. I use it to mock up layouts initially, and
its also great at handling RPC code generation. There is a new free GWT plugin
for netbeans 6, but its not quite the level of GWT Designer yet.

GWT is great though because it is so modular. As new libraries come out you
can just mix and match to get the widgets you want. Try that in native
javascript on a large scale and you can quickly get a headache..

