Did you miss us? We haven't spent quite as much time answering questions on the GWT group lately because the GWT engineering team has been heads-down the last few weeks, busily working on your most-requested features and squashing your most-reported bugs. In addition to the items already marked "Fix in Progress" on the issues list, the new version of GWT (coming in early August) will include
gwt-user.jar
By the way...we've heard your requests for more frequent releases, and so we've been gearing up internally to deliver. We've recently switched to building with Maven, and we have plans for a more interactive way to manage issues.
So, thanks for your patience! The GWT team is totally pumped about the level of interest in GWT. We've been taking a little extra time here at the beginning to make sure that we're completely on track to ensure that GWT quickly evolves into a rock solid platform -- one that you trust for your biggest apps but that's easy enough to let you whip up your pet project du jour. The next release will be the first step in that direction, and we anticipate being able to deliver releases more quickly in the coming few months.
Bruce Perry just published a nice GWT tutorial over at XML.com, walking through GWT Ant build configuration, RPCs, and using GWT RemoteServiceServlets with Tomcat.
RemoteServiceServlet
GWT developers have been energetic in the past few weeks. A few examples: Ryan Dewsbury created GWT-powered gpokr, a cool multiplayer no-limit Texas Hold'Em implementation with real-time chat. Our favorite office time-waster is Mark Roth 's GWT Hang Man. Another developer has also started work on a more ambitious photo-sharing site called myNetImages, built with GWT. Check out the GWT Site blog for a nice collection of links and information.
On the widget development front, Robert Hanson's GWT Widget Library now incorporates an impressive array of widgets, including SVG vector graphics, a calculator widget, and an editable label control. The GWT Component Library has also grown quite a bit to include everything from an auto-completion widget to a calendar control.
IDE support for GWT has also improved, thanks to the incredible efforts from IDE developers. JetBrains has released an impressive IntelliJ IDEA GWT Studio plugin with deep GWT compiler integration and JSNI syntax highlighting. And Roumen Strobl from Sun blogged about a nice NetBeans template for GWT.
