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Is Anyone Using the Google Web Toolkit?
eldavojohn writes "After seeing some applications from Google and participating in the Google Codejam (which seems to be built using the GWT), I kind of expected to see websites spring up left and right based off the GWT. Well, it's been a year and a half since they open sourced it and I have to admit that I am more than a little disappointed by its low profile in the UI community. I've been trolling their blog and have seen a few books out on it. But the one thing I'm not seeing is its use outside of Google. I've worked through the examples and tutorials at home and though I've been impressed with the speed, I am disturbed by the actual result — a whole ton of generated Javascript. But this is the first UI technology I've found where I can write in the native language of the server (Java) to generate and unit-test the UI code. Aside from Google's use and the games of Ryan Dewsbury like KDice & GPokr, does anyone know of major sites using the GWT? If you don't and you've used it yourself, why isn't it taking off? Is it too immature? Is it a solution to a problem that already has too many solutions? Is it fundamentally lacking in some way?"
Because a big company open sources something we're supposed drop what we're doing and run to the next best thing?
JavaScript libraries and toolkits multiply faster than rabbits, there's a new "framework" coming out each week, and some of them had strong developer support (i.e. people willing to answer my stupid questions in forums) long before Google came out with their stuff.
Not that it's bad or anything, but in the end it's all JavaScript anyway, and learning two different ways to get to the same goal (an interactive site) is generally pretty low on everybody's priority list.
Are you using Google Sparse Hash by the way? Why not?
is that everyone wants to roll their own.
How we know is more important than what we know.
On a personal level, I'd rather see the effort spent learning GWT applied to learning Javascript and the web technologies instead. There are a lot of frameworks out there, but none of them are actually needed in 90% of the cases. What we actually need are programmers who know how to write maintainable and highly interactive Javascript components for their sites. Such knowledge allows them to get the job done faster than mucking about with Yet Another Framework(TM) designed to take a cannon to the problem of killing a fly.
It's not learning Javascript that's the big obstacle to coding your own solutions sans framework; it's dealing with the browser compatibility issues. Frameworks largely compensate for that.
If you write your own non-trivial Javascript code, you have to test on IE 6/7/8, FF 2/3, Opera 9.whatever, Safari 2/3, etc etc etc etc.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Enhancement
When building sites I start with the plain HTML, make it usable, and then use statically linked JavaScript to start rewriting the page with the bells and whistles when the page loads. That way, if JS is not enabled the reader doesn't get the 'enhancements' but the core functionality is still there.
Stupid flounders!
I couldn't agree more. There 2 very different ways to use Ajax:
1) have a traditional site and embed small "Ajax goodies" here and there, like digg does with comments.
2) have a 100% Ajax site, like GMail.
Cleary, GWT is good for (2), not (1). Now ask yourself, how many full Ajax sites do you know? GMail, Yahoo mail, a couple more? So it's not a problem with GWT, it's just that the idea of a full Ajax site is not suitable for the open web, it is much more useful for intranet and web-apps use.