{"id":440,"date":"2007-10-10T16:52:46","date_gmt":"2007-10-10T22:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/000440"},"modified":"2007-10-10T16:52:46","modified_gmt":"2007-10-10T22:52:46","slug":"gwt-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/440","title":{"rendered":"GWT impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

After about a year of working with GWT, it seems to me like there are two places where it is really useful as a technology:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Quickly building relatively sophisticated user interfaces for entire web based applications. An intranet ‘client-server’ type application, like a timesheet, would be a perfect fit. If you use Java on the server side, domain objects can even be shared.<\/li>\n
  2. Building small widgets that have anything beyond the simplest logic. This is the best way to integrate GWT into an existing application–add small bits of functionality that improve the user experience. You can use GWT to manage, reuse and package this logic.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    However, what GWT is best for is not the limiting factor for GWT; rather, if you aren’t a Java developer, GWT just doesn’t make sense. (I’m ignoring the fact that if a user doesn’t have JavaScript enabled, GWT doesn’t make sense, since this is a failing of almost all the Web 2.0 rich user interface toolkits).<\/p>\n

    For me, being a Java developer and a fan of Eclipse, GWT is a natural fit for a number of reasons. The Java object serialization support<\/a>, the use of an IDE to code Javascript, the JRE emulation, and the event driven user interface model all make it extremely comfortable to develop in the language. If you’re already coding the server side in Java, GWT is one less language to learn (until you need to do something that isn’t provided for in the emulation libraries, or you need to use a Java 1.5 feature, or a bug leaks up through the abstraction; of course, these problems will never happen).<\/p>\n

    While I don’t have deep knowledge with other toolkits (I’ve worked slightly with the Yahoo! User Inteface Library<\/a> and have toyed with Dojo), it seems to me that many many folks can get by using them; there’s no tie to Java.<\/p>\n

    If someone was going to ask me whether or not they should use GWT, I’d boil it down to the following questions:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Are your developers familiar with Java? (If ‘no’, don’t use GWT.)<\/li>\n
    2. Are your developers familiar with JavaScript? (If ‘yes’, consider not using GWT.)<\/li>\n
    3. Are you integrating with an existing app? (If ‘yes’, GWT might be a good fit.)<\/li>\n
    4. If so, are you planning to ‘web 2.0’-ify the existing application, or add widgets to enhance existing functionality? (If planning to ‘web 2.0’-ify existing functionality, don’t use GWT.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      On a final note, I don’t want to bag on GWT too much. GWT has improved tremendously over the past year or so, and I’m very glad to have used it. I think it’s quite cool tech, and I think it has really improved the user experience on my client’s site.<\/p>\n

      Thank you, Google, for releasing GWT and making it available for me to use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      After about a year of working with GWT, it seems to me like there are two places where it is really useful as a technology: Quickly building relatively sophisticated user […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,18,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dynamic-languages","category-gwt","category-java","category-yui"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}