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Google toolkit upgrade touts faster compiler


By Robert Mullins
May 30, 2008 — 
If AJAX isn’t the platform of the year, don’t tell Google, which hopes to hasten development of new AJAX applications with another preview of its Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

Google Web Toolkit Release Candidate 1.5 was introduced at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco this week.

Highlights of the 1.5 release include support for the syntax of Java 5—the latest iteration of the Java programming language—and a compiler that converts Java code into JavaScript, a lingua franca for browsers with any pretensions to market share. “That’s the premise: development in Java, deployment in JavaScript,” said Bruce Johnson, the engineering manager for GWT at Google.

Google developed GWT on the premise that the Web browser is the “application platform of choice,” said Johnson.

“With the advent of AJAX and rich browser techniques, everybody started to realize that the browsers really are pretty capable as an app platform. They could do things like drag and drop and create nice visuals,” he continued.

The compiler in version 1.5 produces faster JavaScript than a person could write by hand, added Johnson, and users of version 1.4 can download 1.5 and see improvement in their applications right away.

“They recompile it and their application gets noticeably faster. That’s a very typical phenomenon, and that’s a really big value proposition,” he noted.

However, AJAX development for the browser does have its limitations, Johnson added, such as the various quirks that develop in different types of browsers. GWT 1.5, by compiling Java code into JavaScript, minimizes many of those quirks, enabling an application to run easily in different browsers.

Google is embracing the Web browser—rather than the desktop or server—as the preferred application platform because it is ubiquitous and makes an application available globally, said Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for developer products at Google.

“I think the Web has matured at a pretty amazing rate. I don’t think there’s any question that in terms of the platform, the Web has won,” said Gundotra, during a news conference following his keynote address at the conference.

The GWT is open source and available free to developers, including those who will join Google’s new App Engine development platform. Announced April 7, App Engine is a free service for developers to build software applications and host them for free on Google’s IT infrastructure. Google announced new details about App Engine at Google I/O, and presented a demonstration of Android, Google’s effort to create a completely open-source software stack for running on mobile devices.

The crowd of more than 2,000 burst into applause when Google Android engineer Steve Horowitz demonstrated a mobile application of Google’s Street View mapping service that shows a street-level photo of a location. Coupled with a compass function, the image on a mobile phone panned across a street scene as Horowitz moved the phone around the points of the compass.


Related Search Term(s): AJAX, Java, mobile development, Google


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