It's a really big day for Google Web Toolkit: GWT 1.4 is now available -- and, with more than a million downloads under our belt, GWT is no longer in beta!
Let's start with what some folks have to say about their experience using GWT during the past year...
The toolkit is more than a pleasure to use and made my web-app development actually FUN again. - Dean S. Jones
This year, for the first time, I have started to learn AJAX. To get my feet in the ground, I have attended several seminars and talked to many friends knowledgeable on AJAX. I came across a lot of frameworks and tools. Dojo, Prototype, Rico, Scriptaculous, jMaki - you name it. I had everything installed in my laptop. After struggling for a month, I realized that I was not learning anything new, let alone building an application using AJAX. Then, I looked at GWT. Things slowly started moving in the positive direction. I was able to leverage my 8-10 years of Java experience to build AJAX applications using GWT. I didn't have to bother learning javascript or other AJAX internals. GWT made sure that the application I am writing is cross-browser compatible. Thanks to the Google team for building this wonderful piece of technology. You must realize how many new people are benefited everyday from your hard work and creativity. I have completed my second AJAX project using GWT. I couldn't have done this without you. - Sudhansu Pati
Q: Can anyone provide a ball-park numeric estimate of how much time the use of GWT saved you? - John Gunther [asked on the GWT Developer Forum] A: 100% + faster. Easily. And this number goes up as application complexity goes up. - Ryan Dewsbury A: GWT will -really- save you time in maintenance (try and refactor browser dependent javascript if you dare!), and GWT is a great tool for scaling your server, because it allows you to ship off a lot of state info to the client. - Reinier Zwitserloot
For a while we had an AJAX-style solution using JavaScript hand-coded by a contractor. The contractor left, the code was the most hideous thing I've ever seen...that sure wasn't the answer. [...] The original application was developed over a period of several years, [yet] we have basically rewritten the user interface in GWT with three Java developers over about five months. There is no way we could have done that writing in any kind of scripting language, and still have it be maintainable and flexible (which is very important to me). - Tim Ihde
Keep up the good work...this project is the best I've seen in a long time! It's already saved me weeks of tedious javascript coding and revolutionised the way my company writes technology demos. - Sam Halliday
If you're interested to learn more, here are some links to help you get started:
There's lots and lots of cool new stuff in GWT 1.4, so it's hard to know where to start. How about application performance?! This release includes several breakthroughs that make your compiled GWT code significantly smaller and faster. Many users are reporting that after a simple recompile with 1.4, their applications are up to 30% smaller and 20%-50% faster. And startup time in particular is now highly optimized thanks to a new bootstrapping technique and the availability of image bundles. To see the new hotness in action, try visiting the new-and-improved Mail sample a few times. It's darn fast the very first time you visit it, but subsequent visits are insanely fast. That's because, in addition to a fast initial startup, GWT code uses a clever caching technique to prevent applications from making unnecessary HTTP requests. As Joel Webber (Tech Lead of GWT Core Libraries) would say, "The fastest HTTP requests are those that do not, in fact, occur."
Here's a broad overview of the major enhancements:
Additional details on these new features and bugfixes are in the blog post announcing the original GWT 1.4 Release Candidate.
For all you GWT veterans ready to download GWT 1.4, see the new FAQ section "How do I upgrade to GWT 1.4?" for step-by-step instructions on the update.
And for anyone totally new to GWT, on behalf of the awesomely cool developer community and the GWT engineering team at Google, welcome!
At long last, Google Web Toolkit (GWT) 1.4 Release Candidate 2 is now available for download. Though it has taken some time since 1.4 RC1 was released, we've fixed nearly 100 bugs since then. This may well be the best and most solid GWT release to date, and we expect this build will become the final 1.4 release. Still, until we designate a "final" 1.4 release, we strongly recommend against using it in production applications. If you run into problems, please let us know in the issue tracker. And if you don't run into any problems, please take a moment to thank all of the GWT open source contributors who have made such a big impact on GWT 1.4. :)
Looking ahead, we plan to start on GWT 1.5 quickly, the main thrust of which will be Java 5.0 language support and all that entails. We intend to make a wholesale shift to 5.0 syntax for all GWT client code; with luck this won't be problematic, since Java 5.0 syntax is largely backwards compatible. An open question is whether we will continue to produce Java 1.4-compatible server-side components. Feel free to join in the discussions on the Developer Forum.
With all of the excitement around Google Developer Day, we didn't have a chance to tell you about a subtle point regarding the launch of the Google Mashup Editor: the editor's front-end was built using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). Given that, we invited Rich Burdon, Tech Lead of the Google Mashup Editor team, to write a post detailing why they chose to develop using GWT. Here's Rich:
At Google Developer Day, we launched the Google Mashup Editor -- a quick way to build simple applications. The Mashup Editor lets you create mashups without having to do much coding; instead, you use standard HTML and extended tags, which correspond to UI controls that can display and manipulate RSS, Atom and GData feeds.
The product consists of three parts:
Before starting the project, our team already had a lot of experience building complex AJAX applications by hand -- and had experienced many of the problems associated with this approach. Here are some of the reasons why we chose to use GWT rather than rolling our own native JavaScript framework this time around:
Of course, the other huge benefit of open systems (and especially open source projects) is learning from the collective wisdom of everyone who uses the technology. And so we're looking forward to incorporating the ongoing developments of GWT within the Mashup Editor.
Interested in playing around with the Google Mashup Editor? Head over to its homepage to sign up for the limited beta, and then check out our mashup gallery and developer forum for sample mashups built by the community.
OSCON 2007 is starting now! As you may have already read, Google is quite involved with OSCON this year. On the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) team, we're especially excited as this is the first OSCON since GWT went open source.
Joel Webber, Bob Vawter, Rajeev Dayal, and I are heading to Portland to be on hand for Wednesday evening's Google Web Toolkit Hack Session. We hope it'll be a lively discussion about what people are already doing with GWT, what important questions are lingering, and suggestions for future improvements. Attendance is limited at this event, so please arrive promptly.
And beyond the numerous other talks Googlers are giving, Joel Webber will speak on Thursday about Writing Big Apps with GWT.
Also on Thursday, at the AJAX Experience in San Francisco, Dan Morrill will be presenting Fast, Easy, Beautiful: Pick Three -- Building AJAX Apps with GWT.
Outside of conference participation, we wanted to let you know that we're in the home stretch for the second release candidate for GWT 1.4. If you've not already had a chance to see GWT 1.4's first RC, we'd recommend you read up on what's new, and try it out. For GWT 1.4 RC2, you can watch the progress on GWT's issue tracker as open issues dwindle.
A little while ago, we heard from the folks over at Pearson Education who said they were impressed with the interest in the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and wanted to produce a 3-day GWT conference. After a few conversations to flesh out topics and program logistics, we’re pleased to report that Voices That Matter: Google Web Toolkit is set for December 4-6, 2007 in San Francisco. We couldn’t be happier to be working with Pearson on this event.
While we’re still discussing the nitty-gritty details of the schedule, nearly all of the GWT team will be speaking and participating in the conference, so we hope we’ll be able to have a chance to talk with you. You can be certain that the topics will include:
If there are specific topics you want to learn more about, please speak up on the GWT Developer Forum. And in case you just can’t wait until December, you’re in luck:
Now that we've almost recovered from Google Developer Day, it's time for a quick review of some recent GWT sightings in the blogosphere:
The Google Web Toolkit talk that Bruce Johnson and I gave at Google Developer Day is now online. As you might have guessed, it emphasizes end-user experience, GWT usability features, and several of the big improvements made in GWT 1.4 RC.
This is an in-progress blog series talking about the nuts and bolts of GWT by Ray Cromwell, CTO of Timepedia. Timepedia recently released Chronoscope, a GWT charting and visualization platform. In his first post, Ray delves into some of the theory and practice of the GWT compiler, explaining many invisible-but-important details that don't typically get a lot of fanfare.
AgileAjax recently posted an interview with Dr. Adam Tacy and Robert Hanson, authors of GWT in Action. With the benefit of a full year's experience, they thoroughly answer some of the initial doubts about the GWT approach expressed on Ajaxian soon after GWT's initial launch.
It is quite rewarding to see increasing awareness of just how well the GWT approach works in practice and how much value the GWT compiler and code generators bring to the AJAX development process.
To add to the excitement around Google Developer Day, just a hair after our one-year launch anniversary, it turns out that Google Web Toolkit (GWT) has been downloaded more than 1 million times!
We're especially excited to see the amount of interest since GWT went open source. With advances like those in GWT 1.4, we feel we're making solid progress towards our mission "to radically improve the web experience for users by enabling developers to use existing Java tools to build no-compromise AJAX for any modern browser" (you can read more about our mission to make GWT better).
So try out GWT. You'll be in good company.
