LOGIN | REGISTER NOW | SUBSCRIBE
 
 
News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>


   

 
 
Download Current Issue
ISSUE 3/15/2010 PDF

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Receive the print Edition?


 
blogs tab
Microsoft lifts the hood on IE9
Microsoft is previewing IE9.
03/16/2010 01:10 PM EST

People Power enters the green technology market
People Power launches SuRF Developer's Kit for developers looking to get into green technology.
03/16/2010 11:51 AM EST

Windows Phone 7 will not support HTML 5
Windows Phone 7 will not support HTML 5.
03/15/2010 05:51 PM EST

 

Events calendar tab
SHARE
3/14/2010 to 3/18/2010
Seattle, Wa.
SHARE

Cloud Connect
3/15/2010 to 3/18/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
TechWeb

SharePointPro Summit & Expo
3/16/2010 to 3/19/2010
Las Vegas
Penton Media

TheServerSide Java Symposium
3/17/2010 to 3/19/2010
Las Vegas
TechTarget

EclipseCon
3/22/2010 to 3/25/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
The Eclipse Foundation


 
print Printable version 
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Mono brings .NET to Android
At Microsoft MIX, Mono will unveil the ability to port .NET applications to the Android op...

Even with its success, .NET causes some consternation
Despite its popularity, the developer community believes that .NET isn't being fully serve...

Guest View: The half-agile path leads nowhere
While businesses are taking on agile and adopting its practices, an incomplete implementat...

Digg!  Digg
Reddit  Reddit
Slashdot  Slashdot
Share on facebook  Facebook
Share on Twitter  Twitter

GWT 1.5 Imminent


New version adds string interning and Java 1.5 support

By Alex Handy
December 28, 2007 — 
SAN FRANCISCO — The rise of the Google Web Toolkit could lead to the demise of the Struts Java Web framework. David Geary, a member of the expert group for the JavaServer Faces 2.0 specification, also insinuated that JSF is in no danger of becoming obsolete, during a talk at the Voices that Matter Conference on Google Web Toolkit (GWT) conference here in early December.

Geary claimed that GWT's biggest draw for enterprise developers is its similarity to Java’s Abstract Window Toolkit, Swing and the Standard Widget Toolkit. Indeed, a show of hands from the audience showed that nearly 80 percent of those in attendance had worked with these frameworks in their environments. He highlighted the parallels by showing off the code behind Yahoo's Trips Planner site, which is built with GWT. In that site, users can drag and drop list items in an ordered list, in a manner similar to that seen in desktop applications.

“There's no amount of Struts code in the world that can do this,” he said, citing that framework's shortcomings.

When asked what made GWT so unique, Geary described a feature of GWT that he initially thought was a major shortcoming.

“GWT doesn't give you built-in database access,” said Geary. “It won't interfere with the framework on the server. You can use it with JSF or Ruby on Rails [RoR]. We can integrate with other frameworks that have a lot of horsepower on the server, like RoR, or PHP with Drupal.”

Despite his disdain for Struts, Geary discussed integrations with the framework. To illustrate the possibilities, he showed off a GWT-based mortgage calculator widget pasted on top of a Struts page.

“This is making an RPC call in the server with a table of market rates, and [it] sends back JSON [JavaScript Object Notation]. The JSON is parsed on the client. GWT provides extensive support for parsing the JSON. We've added AJAX goodness to the barren landscape of a sorry Struts application. What you might want to do is replace [the] HTML elements on top with GWT widgets. Then you need a deeper level of integration. That sounds like a fair amount of work, but there's already a Struts-GWT integration project out there,” said Geary.

For version 1.5, the GWT team intends to fully work with Java 1.5, said Scott Blum, a software engineer on the GWT team. Blum's been on the GWT team since its inception at Google, and he said that the team has now grown to roughly 14 people, not counting the countless external developers who contribute code every day.

For version 1.5, the team updated all of the user interface libraries to conform to Java 1.5 standards. The ability to use methods across Java and JavaScript by embedding the method in code instead of presenting the entire library will also be included for the first time.

For GWT 1.6 and beyond, the team at Google hopes to look into further optimizations, such as adding in the ability to dynamically generate Cascading Style Sheets tailored to each browser, said Blum.

Google Web Toolkit version 1.5 should arrive in a finalized form in January. Blum said that the development team hopes to get into a quarterly release schedule, but admitted that this long-term goal has yet to come to fruition.


Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/31437
 

Add comment


Name*
Email*  
Country     


  • Comment
  • Preview
Loading