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Five AJAX Frameworks Reviewed
prostoalex writes "Dr. Dobb's Journal reviews 5 AJAX frameworks: Dojo 0.3.1, Prototype and Scriptaculous 1.4, Direct Web Reporting 1.0, Yahoo! User Interface Library 0.11.1 and Google Web Toolkit 1.0. Each framework was tested in two basic scenarios — writing a 'hub' (titled collapsible link list frequently seen on sidebars of many Web sites) and a 'tab panel' (horizontal tabbed navigation bar). During the process, Dr. Dobb's Journal reviewers noted that 'Dojo provides more features and HTML widgets than YUI and Prototype' but eventually 'settled on the Yahoo! User Interface Library.'"
Size, size, size...
I do not know why GWT was dismissed from the above test (claiming a new "Java API" had to be learnt, as if the other frameworks do not require some domain specific API knowledge). What I know is that GWT makes use of modern compiler optimisation theories to remove dead code (AVAIL and LVA comes to mind), to make the best decisions when it comes to code elimination. Go ahead, write your custom "l33t haxxor javascript" to keep on beating an already dead horse (bad) or reinvent the wheel (even worse).
You are probably the kind of person who think you can manually improve the register allocation by handwritten code over de facto graph colouring register allocation techniques, also implemented by compilers. Either that, or you are completely unaware of all the behind the scene computations made possible by a high level language such as JavaScript, in which case you have no idea how much "control" you are giving up. In that case, I suggest going back to asm.exe and load up a couple of networking libraries for TCP/IP, a scheduler library for multi-threading the GUI/network code, some screen drawing libs, maybe even a widget library, a nice HTML library, then some JavaScript sugar on top. Oh, wait!!! That is a lot of bloat, better make a custom library that implements only the necessities... See you at the asylum!
"Young friend", I take that as a compliment. Yet you are the one with an ID a couple of hundred thousand greater than mine. Do not despair, I shall assume you are quite old (since I am) and evidently slow (do not falter, I shall be too, soon enough).
You do make a good point regarding in-house production uses of GWT (it is 0, as we both know) but that does not set it very much apart from the other frameworks tested. There is GPokr though, which you may find yourself enjoying while pondering over your next irrelevant proverb to verbatim.