GWT Blog

GWT Gears Up

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

We hope you saw the recent announcement of Google Gears, which is being unveiled at Google Developer Day. Well, we were so excited about the possibility of AJAX applications working even while offline, we went ahead and put together the Google API Library for Google Web Toolkit with support for Google Gears. This open source library allows developers writing applications with Google Web Toolkit to take advantage of the Google Gears APIs to develop applications that work offline — on a plane or anywhere else you happen to be. Since interoperability is at the very core of GWT, we wanted to take this opportunity to show an example of how GWT applications can be built with JavaScript APIs, taking advantage of GWT's JavaScript Native Interface (JSNI). Please keep in mind that this is an early prototype of this library, and so your mileage may vary. We are planning to add support for other Google APIs; if you'd like to help, please check out Making GWT Better, and contribute your ideas. If you're curious to get started, check out the project on Google Code.

Google Web Toolkit 1.4 Release Candidate

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

I'm very happy to report that Google Web Toolkit (GWT) 1.4 Release Candidate is now available for download. This is undoubtedly the biggest GWT release yet. In addition to 150+ bugfixes, GWT 1.4 RC includes a ton of new features, improvements and optimizations. You'll find the complete itemized list of changes in the GWT issue tracker, but here's the short(er) version:

Size and Speed Optimizations

New size improvements in the GWT compiler produce JavaScript that is 10-20% smaller when simply recompiled with GWT 1.4 RC.
An enhanced startup sequence reduces the size of your module's startup script by 80%! Even better, the new startup sequence removes an entire HTTP round-trip, reducing latency during those crucial first few hundred milliseconds at startup. According to our measurements, modules load about 33% faster as a result.
The above optimizations combined with ImageBundle, described below, make it possible for GWT-based applications to load surprisingly quickly. To see for yourself, check out startup time of the Mail sample included in the GWT 1.4 RC download.

Deployment Enhancements

GWT RPC is no longer tied to exclusively to servlets. New modularized RPC server code makes it easy to connect GWT RPC to your choice of Java back-ends.
Adding GWT modules to an HTML page has been simplified: just add a <script> tag. You no longer need to use <meta name="'gwt:module'"> and <script src="gwt.js">. Just reference your module and go.
Cross-site script inclusion is now supported. The compiler produces a "-xs" (meaning "cross-site") version of your module's startup script that can be included without being restricted by the same-origin policy. Be careful, though. Including scripts from other sites that you don't fully trust is a big security risk.

Widget and Library Enhancements

RichTextArea allows "drop in" functionality for rich text editing.
SuggestBox makes it easy to add auto-complete functionality.
Splitters! HorizontalSplitPanel and VerticalSplitPanel allow users to resize portions of the user interface.
PushButton and ToggleButton are easy-to-customize button widgets that can enhance the look-and-feel of your UI.
DisclosurePanel is a simple, nice-looking panel that lets users easily hide and show portions of your application UI.
DateTimeFormat and NumberFormat make it easy to parse and format dates, times, and numbers for users all over the world.
IncrementalCommand helps you implement long-running tasks in your client code without triggering "slow script" warnings.
A new benchmarking subsystem integrates with JUnit to let you record and compare the speed of code snippets across multiple browsers and multiple parameter ranges. Benchmarking is a powerful way to identify bottlenecks and compare performance of alternative implementations.
The oft-requested java.io.Serializable is now included in the JRE emulation library and is synonymous with IsSerializable for the purpose of GWT RPC.
Mouse wheel events are now available on a variety of widgets.
And lots and lots of other enhancements.

ImageBundle

ImageBundle is the single biggest have-to-see-it-to-believe-it feature of GWT 1.4 RC. Image bundles make it trivially easy to combine dozens of images into a single "image strip", collapsing what would have been dozens of HTTP requests into one: a single, permanently-cacheable image file.
Image bundles manage everything for you automatically, from computing clipping rectangles to making transparent PNGs work in IE6. You can even choose to get the clipped image as an Image widget or as pure HTML for inclusion in a larger HTML template.
In addition to enabling a blazing-fast startup, image bundles help make the UI look better during startup, too. Typical AJAX apps exhibit "bouncy relayout" as individual images are loaded one-at-a-time. To fix this problem has traditionally required laboriously pre-initializing the width and height of each individual image ahead of time. Image bundles do the same thing automatically. The dimensions of each clipped image are computed automatically during compilation as the bundled image file is being created. Voila! The result is a fast, non-ugly user startup experience that requires no extra work on the part of the GWT developer to keep up-to-date.

GWT 1.4 RC is the first release developed with major participation from the GWT open source contributors. Many of the biggest improvements in GWT 1.4 RC came from ideas and patches contributed by the community. A big congratulations and thank you is in order to everyone who has worked so hard to make GWT 1.4 RC happen. In other GWT news...

JavaOne:

A few weeks ago at JavaOne, several of the GWT team members had the pleasure of meeting — and, of course, talking shop with — several active members of the GWT community. It's great to actually be able to talk about all this cool stuff in person now and then :-)
In case you weren't able to attend, check out a review of the JavaOne GWT talk.
We're also really pumped to see that GWT in Action was a best-seller book at JavaOne.

GWT in the classroom:

Later on this summer, UC Berkeley is offering a two-day course called "UI Design and Implementation Using GWT."

Video of GWT conference session:

The video of my talk "What, Why, and How" from JavaZone 2006 is now available online. It's a good introduction to GWT because it explains the motivation for AJAX itself — focusing on end-user experience, of course.

Technical review of GWT:

In case you're curious to hear what other people think about GWT, take a look at this review.

It seems like it's been one major event after another lately. Next up: Google Developer Day! It's happening Thursday! Please join us in Mountain View if you can, or if you'd rather, go to GWT sessions in Beijing, London, Paris, Sao Paulo, or Sydney. With that, I'll leave you to go play with GWT 1.4 RC. As always, let us know what you think in the GWT Developer Forum.

GWT Grab Bag: JavaOne, SeaJUG, and eTripBuilder.com

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Since JavaOne is where we first introduced you to the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), we're quite excited about all that we're doing at JavaOne this year. If you're attending the conference, be sure to check out Bruce and Joel's GWT session (Wednesday, May 9 @ 1:30pm). We hope you'll also be able to stop by the Google booth to chat. Feel free to let us know on the GWT Developer Forum, so we know to look for you. For those of you near Seattle, Washington, if you've been waiting for a GWT presentation to get your feet wet, I'm happy to report that Bob Vawter is presenting at SeaJUG next week (Tuesday, May 15 @ 7pm). We've also recently discovered a very elegant application built with GWT: eTripBuilder.com. Not only is their application small (136K, uncompressed) and speedy, but they're taking advantage of some of GWT's benefits: they are using history, they've built custom widgets (e.g. a date picker), and they've made great use of CSS. We're proud that GWT is a part of such a great app.

Updates from GWT-land

Friday, April 27, 2007

I know we've been a little quiet lately about Google Web Toolkit (GWT) product development, but, don't worry, we're feverishly polishing up the codebase for GWT 1.4. We've checked in all the source code for the new features, and we'll produce a release candidate once we address all the Critical and High priority issues tagged as 1.4RC. On the app development side of things, we're really excited to see a new application called QueWeb Customer Care, which is a Customer Relationship Management tool built with GWT; go ahead and play with a demo (you have to register, but it's free). They've done some fancy stuff and the app is still quite fast. In other news, we'd like to give a warm welcome to Rajeev Dayal and Bob Vawter, two relatively new software engineers on the GWT team. Given logistics, Rajeev, Bob and Joel Webber weren't pictured previously, but we didn't want to leave them out of the fun:

Of course, if you just can't wait to get started, you can always download GWT 1.3. Or if you'd like to throw in a few bug fixes of your own, you can get started on Making GWT Better.

Blown Away by the Google Summer of Code

Monday, April 16, 2007

This year, the Google Web Toolkit is participating in the Google Summer of Code. We were absolutely amazed by the turnout. We received over 100 proposals in response to our request for ideas! We wish we could have accepted everyone, but we had to pick three. Here are the students who will be working with the GWT team this summer, and their projects:

Aleksey Lagoshin: Sockets for GWT

Aleksandar Pantaleev: API Compatibility Tool

Tomasz Kolodziejczyk: GWT for Gadgets

The competition was fierce -- we had a really tough time narrowing down the field to those three. Thanks to everyone who applied! We hope you'll help us welcome Aleksey, Aleksandar, and Tomasz as they get started on their projects. They'll be basing their work on the current version of GWT, and we look forward to adding these exciting features to a future version.

Security for GWT Applications

Monday, April 02, 2007

Recently I've been working on some Google Web Toolkit (GWT) libraries that involve JSON and JSONP. While working on this project, I've been reminded just how tricky AJAX can be. It's no secret that there are a lot of people out there who spend huge portions of their lives thinking up ways to steal your data (or worse). Unfortunately, the same cool tricks that let you build AJAX sites and mashups also make it easy to build unsafe web applications. Some of the attacks evildoers have come up with are downright devious! One of the key goals of GWT is to let developers focus on their users' needs, instead of on JavaScript and browser quirks. However, the consequences of a security exploit can be serious, so it's important that GWT developers understand how such attacks work, and how to prevent them. To help get the word out, I've put together an article on my experiences. Eventually we'll merge its contents into the GWT Developer Documentation, but we thought that it was important to get this out to GWT developers rather than wait for the next documentation update. You can find the article here: Security for GWT Applications. I hope you find it useful; if you do (or even if you don't), please feel free to let me know in the GWT Developer Forum!

Google Atlanta Open House (Read: We're Hiring!)

Friday, March 30, 2007

Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) engineering team in our Atlanta Engineering office and participating in our Atlanta open house (read about how it went). This was a fun event mostly designed to let the Atlanta community hear about what our engineers are working on in Midtown Atlanta. That is, what we're working on outside of hiring more people.I'm eager to share some photos, which include an appearance by President Jimmy Carter, but before we get to that, let me update you all on the happenings in and around GWT:

A few weeks back Bruce gave a well-received presentation at QCon in London.

In preparation for the GWT tutorial at EclipseCon, Kelly and Miguel used GWT to build Chattr, an instant messaging app that runs in the browser. The source is posted so that you can play around with it if you'd like to see how it works.

Scott and Bret Taylor presented at AJAXWorld in NYC last week.

Immediately following the Atlanta open house, Bruce hopped on a plane to join Rajeev at The ServerSide Java Symposium, and gave a presentation.

Just a couple days ago, Dan Morrill spoke at the Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise conference in Philadelphia.

Now I'll leave you with a few photos:

(Photo credit: Clark Savage) The Google Web Toolkit team (from left to right):

Back row: Miguel Mendez, Kevin Scott, Toby Reyelts, Dan Peterson, Bruce Johnson, Dan Morrill, Alan Eustace

Front row: John Tamplin, Scott Blum, Emily Crutcher, Kelly Norton

Not pictured: Joel Webber, Rajeev Dayal

(Photo credit: Clark Savage) During the office tour, Scott demonstrated a new kind of "diplomacy" to President Carter with one of the GWT team's lightsabers... er... conflict-resolution facilitators.

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