Most of Google’s technologies run in a we browser. For example Gmail, Google Reader etc. Google’s client side web services are Ajax based and rely on javascript. Javascript is a single threaded light weight scripting language, its implementation, speed and efficiency vary across web browsers. Yet Google’s web applications are fast and work in all of the modern web browsers.
Wouldn’t it be great if Google created an open source project that enabled other developers to leverage Google’s experience in optimised javascript and cross browser inconsistencies? Enter Google Web Toolkit, a development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. The toolkit allows us to develop ajax web applications in Java. The project includes a compiler which converts the Java source code into highly optimised javascript. We can use a subset of Java’s native libraries as well as the GWT libraries.
Many third party libraries and extensions exist for GWT. GWT-FX which allows us to introduce animations, transitions and effects to GWT. Ext GWT which ports the EXT/Sencha rich components architecture to GWT.
GWT has developed an official Eclipse plug-in for developing GWT applications. A plug-in is also available for the Netbeans IDE.
Click here for an example of GWT in action.
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