Multiply your Java apps by 2.0
17-May-2006Google Web Toolkit. Write Java, translate to AJAX.
Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don’t speak browser quirks as a second language. Writing dynamic web applications today is a tedious and error-prone process; you spend 90% of your time working around subtle incompatabilities between web browsers and platforms, and JavaScript’s lack of modularity makes sharing, testing, and reusing AJAX components difficult and fragile.
GWT lets you avoid many of these headaches while offering your users the same dynamic, standards-compliant experience. You write your front end in the Java programming language, and the GWT compiler converts your Java classes to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.
Just wow. I’m motivated to do something, anything, web-based and useful in Java. It’s been a long time since that last happened.
In all of Google’s latest week of ADD therapy (cf. Infectious Greed’s “please Google, no new products”) this is the one that I think is “teh win.” I’m still irrationally happy that Google notebook exists. But by comparison if GWT works as advertised its place in history as a wonder of the Web 2.0 world is assured.
Hmm. As much as I like AJAX apps when they're
Alastair | 18-May-2006Hmm. As much as I like AJAX apps when they’re done well (as Gmail is) there still isn’t any substitute for a desktop app, or better still a desktop app that uses a web API to store data centrally. In other words I use Mail.app unless it’s blocked by a firewall, in which case the AJAX interface is great.
All this is by way of saying that the really interesting stuff is on the server side.
Hey! This post isn't compatible with Cynicism 1.0 I agree
Chris | 18-May-2006Hey! This post isn’t compatible with Cynicism 1.0
I agree with you re: no substitute for rich desktop apps.
I think that the fiddliness and flakiness of non-mainstream AJAX apps has a lot to do with the development and test environments that they spawn from. I would hope that this (and other tools) lower the barrier to entry for AJAX and increase the average amount QC. Increasing numbers of zero-install, usable and responsive, traditionally applications like we see from Yahoo and Google.