Back in October of this year we released GWT 2.1, with a framework and set of tools that made it easy to build business web apps. Since then we've had some great feedback from the GWT community, and today we're happy to announce that we've incorporated that feedback into our latest release, GWT 2.1.1. The specifics of this release are detailed below, but if you're interested in getting started you can do so here.
For Eclipse users, simply click on the “Google updates available” icon in the lower left hand corner of your screen, or select the “Help->Check for Updates” menu item.
Alongside this release, we’ve also updated the Google Plugin for Eclipse and GWT Designer. Both can be installed via the links below.
The main release updates for each product include:
GWT SDK
GWT’s RequestFactory component, introduced in GWT 2.1, received a lot of attention, both from the GWT team at Google and from the GWT open source community at large. Based on this feedback, we’ve added the following:
If you have questions or want to provide some feedback, we’d love to hear it, and the best place to do so is in the Google Web Toolkit Group.
For those of you that are diligently testing the bounds of the web, you may have noticed some issues when debugging GWT apps within Internet Explorer 9. Even though IE 9 is still in a pre-release phase, we did want to provide some context around the root of the problem, and offer up a workaround to get you working in Development Mode again.
Note that this is only an issue when running your GWT app in Development Mode under IE 9. Production Mode is unaffected.
For some background, there appears to have been a change in behavior in IE 9 related to the way Javascript names are resolved from the perspective of native plugins. When executing in document mode 9, the IE tab that hosts the dev mode plugin crashes.
We are working with Microsoft to understand the issue and come up with a definitive solution. Again, note that this issue affects only GWT Development Mode.
The current workaround is to avoid document mode 9. See the link below for more information.
To force an earlier document mode, add a meta tag to your html files indicating a different document mode. For instance, in the case of the sample GWT app html page, add <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> to the <head> section as shown below:
Until this issue is resolved, you will need to do this for each HTML host page in order to use GWT dev mode with IE9.
One of the features that makes GWT unique is the ability to run your application in the browser of your choice, and debug your Java source in the IDE. While the “browser of your choice” portion of the feature has been quite true for Windows users, our Developer Plugin support has had some gaps. Today we’re happy to close some of these gaps, by announcing the release of a Chrome Developer Plugin for Mac and Linux users.
To download and install the new plugin, simply start debugging your GWT application and point Chrome at the URL provided by the Google Plugin for Eclipse. From there you’ll be prompted to install the “GWT Developer Plugin for Chrome”.
You can also browse directly to the following URL for installation: http://gwt.google.com/missing-plugin/.
In addition to the new OS support, there is an important security fix included in this update. You will see the GWT icon appear in your browser bar when the plugin sees the ?gwt.codesvr fragment in a URL, and it will turn black and white if you need to authorize that host. If you see a full-color icon, that indicates your permissions are in order. You can click the icon to quick-jump to the permissions configuration.
Note to Windows users: we have created a new permissions UI that is baked into the extension rather than using native Windows dialogs. You will need to re-add any hosts you had configured for this new version.
For more information regarding security and the GWT Developer Plugin, checkout the plugin design wiki page, here.
If you have questions or want to provide some feedback, we’d love to hear it, and the best place to do so is at the Google Web Toolkit Group.
For several months now, we’ve been hard at work adding the features and functionality that was first demoed at this year’s Google I/O. The goal of this release has been to make it easy to build business oriented web apps that can take full advantage of the cloud -- zero deployment, instant scaling, cost savings, and portability that allows you to run your app in a variety of cloud environments, such as Google’s hosted service, App Engine, and VMware’s on-premise solution, vFabric. A few weeks ago we mentioned that we were close to wrapping up this project, and today we’re happy to announce the general availability of these tools.
Download the Google Plugin for Eclipse or SpringSource Tool Suite to get started now!
Google Web Toolkit SDK
If you’re looking to start building apps using the Spring Roo and SpringSource Tool Suite integration, the quickest way to start is by downloading SpringSource Tool Suite and installing the Google Plugin for Eclipse from the main Dashboard component.
Once downloaded, simply start up Roo’s command line interpreter, and run the “script expenses.roo” command.
This will run a series of Roo commands that produce the following starter web app:
Now that we’ve created our app and launched it from the command line, we can import it into STS to start customizing it. To do this switch back to STS and click the menu item File->Import, and then select “Existing Maven Projects”.
Once imported you can now run your app directly from STS by right clicking on the project and selecting the “Run As->Web Application”
From there you can start customizing it using our GWT Developer Guides and Roo documentation to help you along the way.
For a complete “Getting Started” guide, be sure to checkout Getting Started with GWT, Spring Roo, and SpringSource Tool Suite.
As you may be able to tell by the list of available product updates, this release has been the culmination of work of several teams. Thanks to the VMware and Spring engineers (Ben Alex, Christian Dupuis, and teams) for working with us to create a seamless and integrated developer experience. And to the developers that have been riding tip of trunk for the past few milestones, submitting questions, issues, and patches, thanks. It wouldn’t be a success without you.
Want to get started? Please download the Google Plugin for Eclipse now! You can jump right in with the Getting Started with GWT 2.1. docs. GWT 2.1 is also available in Maven Central as version 2.1.0.
If you’re interested in receiving updates about existing Google Developer Tools as well as those that are about to be launched, sign up here!
Earlier this year at Google I/O, we announced a collaboration between Google and VMware focused on making it easy to build business-oriented, cloud portable web apps. We showed how businesses could use our integrated developer tools to build modern web apps that are “cloud ready” from the start, and can be deployed to any standard environment, including Google App Engine and on VMware vFabric on-premise solutions. Today we are happy to announce that these tools will be generally available within the next few weeks.
Of course, if you’re itching to get a head start, you can jump right in by downloading the release candidate (RC1) versions of the tools. The easiest way to get the entire tool set is to by downloading SpringSource Tool Suite RC1.
If you’d prefer to wait for the general release, you can sign up here to be notified as soon as they are available.
Spring Roo and Google Web Toolkit - Spring Roo, a next generation rapid application development tool, combined with the power of Google Web Toolkit (GWT) enables developers to build rich browser apps in enterprise production environments. These GWT-powered applications leverage modern browser technologies such as AJAX and HTML5 to create the most compelling end-user experience on both desktops and mobile browsers.
Spring Insight and Google Speed Tracer - Google’s Speed Tracer with VMware’s Spring Insight performance tracing technology enable end-to-end performance visibility into cloud applications. This integration provides a holistic view into the web application performance, improving the end-user experience by optimizing the client side as well as the server side.
SpringSource Tool Suite and Google Plugin for Eclipse - The integration of SpringSource Tool Suite and the Google Plugin for Eclipse makes it easy for developers to build and maintain large scale, web-based, enterprise applications, putting tools that were previously only available when building desktop and server solutions in the hands of those building cutting edge web apps.
Moving forward, both teams are excited about the strides we can make in the mobile web app space. As it stands today, the current technology stack makes it possible to create optimized web apps targeted for the mobile browser. Longer term, we will be looking at incorporating mobile best practices, styled UIs, and HTML5 features such as app cache, local database storage, and geolocation to make the developer and end-user experience first class.
As always, we’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts on this release. Our GWT developer forum is the best place to post this information. Happy coding!
By Brad Abrams, Google Developer Team
A new article on the GWT articles site discusses some of the benefits of hosting a GWT app in a dynamically generated page vs. static HTML.
Using a Dynamic Host Page for Authentication and Initialization
Building on the three previous milestones, we're happy to announce the first release candidate (RC1) of GWT 2.1. While we're still focused on the overall theme of making it easier to build cloud portable business apps via some help from our friends at VMware and Spring, there are more than a few aspects that make this milestone a RC.
First we've rounded out the list of components and features that will ship with GWT 2.1. One of these components is a new Editor framework that allows you to bind your DTOs to a customizable UI which handles all of necessary grunt work of validating and syncing change sets. Another is the availability of the SafeHTML component and its integration within the cell-based widgets. After all, we've optimized these new widgets by injecting HTML, we better do it in a secure manner.
Along with the new components and features, we've solidified the Activities/Places, RequestFactory, Editor framework, and Cell-based widget APIs. So, if you're looking to start a project with GWT 2.1, you can feel confident that your team won't have to refactor code because we've switched out interfaces between now and the final release.
Also, if you're looking to get started with GWT 2.1 we have an initial draft of the new Developer Guides. These can be found at the links below (the Editor framework Developer Guide is coming soon).
As with previous milestones, to get the full effect, you'll want to pick up the Spring Roo RC1 and SpringSource Tool Suite RC1. Ben and Christian from the SpringSource teams have been hard at work adding features and functionality, and it's great to see that we're all very close to the final release.
GWT 2.1 RC is available on our Google Code download site and as version 2.1-SNAPSHOT in the Google Maven Snapshot Repository. We’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts on this release, and our GWT Developer Forum would be the best place to post this information.
