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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.
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!
Just because the AJAX code is not hand coded doesn't mean Google is moving in a new direction. In fact they're moving forward more agressively in the same direction, and are just releasing tools to help everyone go the same way (especially the Google way).
It's not quite a "brand new direction" - Microsoft's Atlas product has been offering something along these lines for a while now (albeit still as a beta). You lay out controls visually in Visual Studio (or Express), and control them programmatically from .NET. It takes care of rendering them down to HTML + Javascript, and it's pretty much cross platform friendly.
I personally find the way it handles remote prodecure calls to the server the most interesting. Just define a serializable java class, you say? And GWT handles the rest, you say? Sign me up!
:-)
This is sexy stuff, people.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Prohibited Actions
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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!
"I think Google is mostly responsible for launching the AJAX trend"
Er, nope. Hard as it is to believe, Microsoft were there first with the awesome Outlook Web Access which mimics Outlook, on a web page really, really well. This used their XMLHTTP ActiveX object which is also used extensively in Windows Update.
The rest happened from there really. Google is probably the best known current implementer of AJAX, but good as they are I certainly wouldn't say they launched it... and I certainly wish world + dog would stop releasing AJAX frameworks!
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?
Microsoft might have provided the first XMLHttpRequest implementation and used it first, but it was Google that made it popular. Before Google Suggest (and later GMail) caught everybody's attention, it languished relatively unknown to most developers for years. Now you can't get away from it.
Sure, browser compatibility played a large part too, but even after Mozilla implemented XMLHttpRequest, I didn't see many people talking about it until Google started using it. So Microsoft might have launched XMLHttpRequest, but it was Google that launched the trend, which is what xbrownx said.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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.
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
It's not "beta" like this half-baked "me-too" from google, and it's open-source.Also commercial support is available it you want to pay for it.
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?
To be fair I think the progression to AJAX was an evolution of which the last breaking point was web service and the ability to easily (I use that term lightly) transmit simple objects across the wire. When MS built their web outlook they where passing raw XML back and forth across the wire, with all the nastiness that comes along with it. With the push towards web services, and the XmlHttpRequest laying in obscurity it was only natural that it someone would (re)figure out the coupling of these technologies to become AJAX for more info on who contributed what look here
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 $0.42 cents too, diapers down to under 10 cents.
Very clever of them, I bet most people wouldn't check...
I wonder how difficult it will be to write degradable applications with this toolkit. The demo applications I played with do nothing at all with javascript disabled... they're just a script tag in a body tag, so they make no attempt to render the application using plain HTML. I know they're just demos, but it won't save any time if you have to develop the non-js version separately... which is a problem particularly for those of us who have to develop to accessibility standards.
Also, this is coming right on the heels of the buzz about Oracle's AJAX Framework... and of course there's the Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework, which uses Dojo, Zimbra, and OpenRico (which in turn uses prototype)... others have mentioned Yahoo!'s toolkit and Atlas, as well, not to mention Rails... My point is that there are suddenly a ton of frameworks that all have slightly different approaches to the whole AJAX idea. Some are higher-level, some lower; some target a specific server backend; some offer UI libraries... Any or all of these might merge or die off or be made irrelevant at any time. It's almost harder to develop AJAXy applications now than back when you had to write your own HTTP request code... sure, you can knock one out in ten minutes now, but you spend the time you saved choosing the toolset beforehand.
I think I'll wait a bit... we've put the scorpions in the box and shaken it, so let's see who survives.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="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
Oh Gawd No!
I forsee a couple of issues:
"Spend the whole day playing with GAWD"
"That site is mostly created by GAWD"
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.