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Google Releases AJAX Framework
maquina writes "Google released a new AJAX framework based on Java. From Google's mouth: "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." This impressive framework promises to make AJAX available to the masses and is one more step towards Google becoming the de facto Internet platform provider."
Your source of, vangaurd of and now creator of all your information.
...is by far and above the fact that you are coding your website in Java, using their API and SWT-like objects, and the Javascript/Ajax is then generated from your classes.
I think Google is mostly responsible for launching the AJAX trend, and now they're moving in a brand new direction? Beautiful.
Oh and they even distributed half of the source code for the project in the JAR files.
Developers are tired of having to reinvent the wheel every time with dynamic components on web pages, and things like PEAR do not have all their component lib. in one centralized location like this. A developer framework for AJAX is definitely a revolutionary. It marks the move toward using web-based platforms for a greater and greater percentage of common computing functions.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
That appears to be precanned Javascript,etc. that alot of people have done before. This is Java programming and debugging straight to 100% browser compatible HTML and Javascript. The only group larger than the google fanboy club is the google is smarter than me and i hate them club.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
...welcome our new buzzword-compliant overlords. MFG, all I read these days is Google, Java and/or AJAX.
No, they haven't - at least not unless you have some other information you're not sharing.
From the Google site:
From the Yahoo link you provided:
So, how is this the same thing?
Nope, there's a big difference between these libraries.
:)
The Y! framework still requires you to write HTML and Javascript - they just make implementing DHTML effects + AJAX less painful.
The Google framework removes the base need for HTML and Javascript authoring from the application development process entirely. Obviously you'll want to make the app look nice and need custom styling but in order to actually develop the functionality, zero HTML is needed.
As a consequence you can use the Yahoo stuff with any backend implementation language (PHP, Java, whatever) while the Google framework is limited to strictly Java. I don't mind though.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
and my brain just keeps seeing GOOGLE AJAX WEB DEVELOPMENT
Maybe we should just call it GAWD for short!
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Prohibited Actions
Except for distributions for internal business and/or personal use to your employees or contractors in compliance with these Terms and Conditions, you may not distribute Google Web Toolkit Development Tools or any services or software associated with or derived from them, or modify, copy, license, or create derivative works from Google Web Toolkit Development Tools, unless you obtain Google's written permission in advance. If you wish to do any of the above, please contact us by emailing apis@google.com. You may not use the Google Web Toolkit Development Tools to develop or distribute products that violate the law or legal rights of third parties.
No, I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth and why does this matter? Because I happen to prefer PHP for web development (just a personal preference). It would be nice to be able to move the JavaScript components off from the Java framework into a PHP based framework. Well, apparantly you can't do that without special permission.
BTW, the Yahoo UI Library is BSD licensed.
Ohhh? Was it overlooked?
To be fair, Yahoo's is just a collection of controls and widgets to be included in a project indvidually - which has been offered by many other sites for quite a while now - while Google's promises to be a framework that takes the headache out of front-end AJAX development. Of course, in my experience "automatically generates code" and "takes the headache out of" are eventually incompatible down the line, but what do I know.
I haven't played with either yet, but they sound like two different beasts to me. The most interesting part of this to me would be to see how Google writes their web code.
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"><html<head <title>Re:Interesting?</></><body<h1<em>I</> Do believe there </><p<a
href="http://www.example.com"<em>there</></>.
Evil?</><p<a
href="http://www.example.com/">is</></></></>
Yes the above code is valid html. Do you speak it?
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
I'm not into fanboyism but this is very very impressive. I took a look at the demos. The Desktop App Clone is particularly very impressive and it shows you what can be achieved with this stuff! I've never liked web development for the compatibility nightmare and plus the fact that it's a very messy business. Java with it's object oriented goodness will allow feature full applications to be developed extremely quickly!
The oft-copied 'google suggest' dropdown stuff. It's not something demoed in the 'kitchensink' app they provide at http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/documentation/ex amples/kitchensink/.
.net can use atlas for most of these features, people using Ruby or other scripting langauges probably have bindings to scriptaculous and other libraries to handle most of this. There were/are probably Java bindings already for scriptaculous, but this makes it easier for java people already used to swing/awt stuff.
:)
I agree with someone else that the Yahoo UI (yui) toolkit seems to get ignored a bit, but I think this plays to a different crowd.
1) This is a java-based thing only it seems. People writing
2) The YUI stuff was more javascript oriented, and, from my experience, difficult to use in some settings. I had a hard time getting the slider stuff to work as needed based solely on their code and one example page, for example. Perhaps that makes me not as l33t as some others who can debug others' javascript in their sleep - I dunno. I do know that if Google makes this easy for people to adopt, it'll take off. Partially because there's a lot of google love amongst early-adopters in the tech community, and partially because making things easy is just a good way to attract people.
3) With the YUI stuff, Yahoo was/is seeming to cater to the scripting crowd more (witness the native serialized PHP responses you can get back). If google is going after the "I write Java apps" crowd, they may be able to bring in a new set of people to web-app development who before now were not in the web space.
I interviewed one of the Yahoo engineers who worked on the YUI widgets release at my podcast - http://webdevradio.com - you can get some more perspective on what Yahoo was/is doing and trying to achieve with that move.
Just some random thoughts...
creation science book
This is great news for all the developers out there. Google by doing this has proved once again that smart business practices and investments make a company, now how much software they patent and lock down. They specfically say that you can create applications like Google Maps and Gmail using their framework. Is someone gonna create a new Gmail or seach engine and take over Google? Prolly not, but Google has shown that not only can it develop high power applications and set the footprints for following developers, but they can also help the community advance just as they have. Just one of the many reasons I love Google.
Bryan
This is required by the Central Hype-Limit Theorem:
Sorry, but I have to give it to someone other than Microsoft. While they did essentially invent the tech behind Ajax, the only major project they used it on was basically something that was closed. I don't mean source, but not open to the public. You only saw it if you had an organization using Outlook/Exchange in the first place, which still excluded a huge majority of people using the web. Had they ported hotmail to the OWA interface, that would have been a major revolution far greater than google maps or anything else. But they didn't.
creation science book
.NET and AJAX really don't play nicely.
Have you seen ICallbackEventHandler in ASP.NET 2 and MS's own ATLAS toolkit?
This impressive framework promises to make AJAX available to the masses and is one more step towards Google becoming the de facto Internet platform provider."
Erm, actually they're playing catch up. From what I can tell, GWT is rather inferior to YUI.
And that includes Scott Adams
The browser vendors consider this "a really good thing" because it offers "product differentiation" and "market segment focus". The cost in human lives is not an issue.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
The w3c validator is fine, to my understanding this is valid html
http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2004/02/evilml
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Yes, it is. It just uses HTML syntax that virtually no browsers have implemented. This is what the HTML 4.01 specification has to say on the matter:
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
This is an impressive toolkit and a nice approach, but Google is not the first to do this. Has anyone heard of ThinWire (http://www.thinwire.com/)? There are already production applications in place built on this framework.
I didn't know Google was a Java shop. Do they mainly code serverside stuff in Java these days? If so, which technology are they using (O/R mapper, servlet container, tricks & quirks). Would be interesting to know.
Any infos?
More like .NET isn't ready for AJAX. AJAX doesn't really use any new web technologies, it just applies existing ones in a somewhat new way. ASP.NET OTOH is a framework that tries to completely shield the developer from the underlying web technologies, and it does so with varying degrees of success, in the process turning out web technology idiots.
It's really nice to see a company releasing new products to stay competitive instead of using litigation to destroy their competitors. I hope they can keep it up.
Search Slashdot for ATLAS (and make sure to copy over all of the negative posts about why people don't want this).
.NET GUI objects to render browser-compliant javascript and HTML.
Atlas is the AJAX framework built by Microsoft that allows you to use
It is a much more proper predecessor to Google's release, compared with Yahoo!'s offering (which I believe MS also predated).
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/0 2/14/1326238
Overlooked in what way? The title of the article was "Google Releases AJAX Framework," not "A Comprehensive Listing of All AJAX Toolkits."
-rd
From: http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/faq.html
"What's the catch? Does Google own my GWT application? Do I have to run AdSense? Do I have to give Google my first-born child?
There's no catch, we promise. See the Terms of Use for the nitty gritty details."
I checked the ToU, apparently you have to make Adsense space on your *second* born child. Premium crib space is up to eCPM of $0.42 cents too, diapers down to under 10 cents.
Very clever of them, I bet most people wouldn't check...
Beg to differ. JavaScript has just as much "modularity" as any other object-oriented language; methods like JSON and libraries like Dojo, Prototype, and the aforementioned Yahoo! Web Services APIs are proof.
Every few years there comes along Yet Another Initiative to fire all the webdevs. No disrepect to Google's engineers, who are clearly brilliant, but we've been there and done that. For a good time, open up Firefox's DOM Inspector, crack into their Kitchen Sink demo, and boggle over the iframes and tables and embedded JavaScript, oh my!
I haven't heard anyone comment about what I think is a great feature in this toolkit:
I know this is something you can hack together if you're writing your own hand-crafted js, but this will be a nice feature -- I haven't looked at the toolkit yet, but I wonder how easy to use this will be.
Have any of the other frameworks provided this mechanism?
I wonder how difficult it will be to write degradable applications with this toolkit. The demo applications I played with do nothing at all with javascript disabled... they're just a script tag in a body tag, so they make no attempt to render the application using plain HTML. I know they're just demos, but it won't save any time if you have to develop the non-js version separately... which is a problem particularly for those of us who have to develop to accessibility standards.
Also, this is coming right on the heels of the buzz about Oracle's AJAX Framework... and of course there's the Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework, which uses Dojo, Zimbra, and OpenRico (which in turn uses prototype)... others have mentioned Yahoo!'s toolkit and Atlas, as well, not to mention Rails... My point is that there are suddenly a ton of frameworks that all have slightly different approaches to the whole AJAX idea. Some are higher-level, some lower; some target a specific server backend; some offer UI libraries... Any or all of these might merge or die off or be made irrelevant at any time. It's almost harder to develop AJAXy applications now than back when you had to write your own HTTP request code... sure, you can knock one out in ten minutes now, but you spend the time you saved choosing the toolset beforehand.
I think I'll wait a bit... we've put the scorpions in the box and shaken it, so let's see who survives.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Coding your UI in java and having it translated into javascript and html without having to worry about cross browser compatibility?
Sounds familiar. It's rather like the echo framework
The big differences I see are:
1) Google toolkit advantages:
- No load on the server to render the UI. All ui code runs on the browser, so this may help server scalability.
2) Echo advantages:
- Fully open source.
- Richer set of ui components (IMO - see the demo at http://demo.nextapp.com/Demo/app )
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Are they using this for their own webapps?
>> Doesn't AJAX mean 'Async. Java And XML'? So can you have AJAX based on something else?
Javascript not Java, so yes, you can have AJAX based on something else.
Oh Gawd No!
I forsee a couple of issues:
"Spend the whole day playing with GAWD"
"That site is mostly created by GAWD"
AJAX = "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML"
so yes, you can have it based on something else. Java != Javascript
|---------------|
practically an AC
I'm suprised no one, especially Sun, have tried it earlier.
They did (along with lots of other OSS toolkits - get googling)
...when Google started vacuuming up a lot of stray Java talent? I'm thinking of folks like Josh Bloch (author of Effective Java, one of the best books I've ever read on Java) and Adam Bosworth (former CTO of BEA). I was always sort of curious about what Google was up to. I've got no proof that either of these gentlemen we involved in GWT, but I'd be surprised if they weren't. Good job, Google.
Note that this toolkit primarly seem to try solve the problems of browser quirks, more efficiently design web sites using AJAX, and do remote procedure calls, not really to leverage the power of Java development and its language to web developers and Javascript.
The Google Web Toolkit supports only a small fraction of the Java Standard Library and seem to be able to replicate the functionality of only a few classes through its emulation library.
This is the stuff from the Java libraries that you can use and have it be able to "translate" your work: java.lang classes and java.util classes.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I suppose that's nice if you actually like programming in Java.
I'll stick to rolling my own, thanks. I suspect I wouldn't be able to use a tool like this for more than a half hour without finding something I want to do that the toolkit doesn't support. What then? Can you edit the JavaScript output by hand or is it totally obfuscated?
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I am surprised that no one has yet brought up lisp macros which can be used to develop a similar framework. Code can be written in Lisp and compiles/generates to javascript. See http://www.cliki.net/Parenscript and http://www.cliki.net/jsgen for implementations in common lisp. The problem I see with any form of generated javascript is that it will be hard to debug should something unexpectedly go wrong.
Actually, GWT works with all server technologies (PHP, ASP, Java, etc). GWT is primarily a client-side technology that is deployed as HTML and JavaScript that can be served by any web server. If you want to do RPCs from GWT to a non-Java server, that is easy too; check out our JSON RPC example here: http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/documentation/ex amples/jsonrpc/. We created this example to demonstrate this exact use case.
Bret Taylor
Product Manager, Google Web Toolkit
Gee ya think? I wasn't aware that either of these translating compilers spit out client agnostic code.
.NET is only available to MS customers.
Did you stop to think I might have been saying that, discounting Mono:
Java is available for everyone?
I don't relish the chance of developing with either but I'd be more likely to pick up a Java toolkit, thank you.
PS> WTF is with slashcode's not honoring line breaks between quotes in "Plain Old Text"?
Were that I say, pancakes?
First I want to say "Thank you" for releasing the project for free use and a double "Thank you" for having large portions under the Apache license.
.java files have an Apache license prefixed. Excellent!
I figured that the output would be owned by the user, but the terms initially looked like the toolkit itself was restricted except for the parts you got from other projects.
I opened the tarball and the two jars and have been reviewing some of the files. I see that substantial numbers of the
Forget "acceptable" - website design and development is perhaps the most practical science ever created. Nobody "does things because they can" in web development - people create toolkits, APIs, services, layouts, hacks, and other bits of code for the Web so that other people can use them to *actually build websites.* That means productivity is not only key, but it is desired at the practical exclusivity of knowledge of the code. In fact, if this toolkit means an art student largely ignorant of programming constructs can create a website like Flickr or Slashdot or a smoother looking Gmail, then I applaud that, because too few web designers really have any grasp of the word design.
The other difference between websites and most programs is that a lot of standalone programs are designed for niche users with specific needs, and can't be translated for other uses easily, whereas most website programming is designed out of flexibility. Because the web uses such loose languages (XML, JSON, SOAP, etc) toolkits are a great way to address the flexibility in a more intuitive way.
It's apples to oranges, really. Web design is 100% practicality.