Cromoteca

The English part of my blog is mainly technical. If you can read Italian, check the Italian section for articles of other kind.

GWT is primarily used in the Java world for obvious reasons: apart from being an excellent tool for creating RIAs (indeed it's my favorite one), it allows to develop both the server and the client part using a single language and a single IDE, and it even allows to share classes.

But GWT can be used with any server technology, and although those advantages do not apply anymore, it is an alternative that deserves serious consideration from developers of any server platform. I happen to be a GWT fan that works in a company that uses Microsoft products, so it seems obvious to me to try to combine both. After all, should we use Flex for example, we would still need to use two languages and two IDEs, so who cares. Same applies to all JavaScript toolkits and frameworks (please don't tell me that Visual Studio is a good JavaScript IDE: it even misses matching braces highlighting).

The main issue with an ASP.NET+GWT setup (as for any non-Java server part) is that one…

Read more

I've heard of many people criticizing GWT, some of the most common reasons are that it translates Java into JavaScript, that web sites are not desktop applications, and that GWT uses Java to write code. Well, here's my thoughts on these points.

I've always looked at GWT like a very interesting technology, but I only recently introduced myself to real GWT development to create the admin interface of MeshCMS 4 (my own GPL CMS). I'm really impressed, and I'm writing this post to point out how I think one should look at GWT.

GWT is neither Java nor JavaScript

Let me clarify what I mean. Sure, you use Java syntax and Java tools when developing (I'm a NetBeans fan for what it's worth). But in a certains sense you're not writing real Java code, since you're not targeting the Java VM. But clearly you're not writing JavaScript, and you can't use closures and such. If you write GWT code thinking about JavaScript, you've missed the whole point. Yes, it will become JavaScript…

Read more

GWT is one of my favorite tools since it was born, but unfortunately I never had a chance to use it at work. I tested it some time ago and I loved it, but version 1.5 stands even above. I can't keep ignoring it, so I'm going to use it in my free time. I'm a GWT newbie, keep this in mind while reading, nevertheless I've organized a simple setup that I like and I wanted to share it hoping for comments and suggestions.

Most Java developers use Maven, as I do, although not always. I tried the GWT Maven plugin, it does everything, but I found it to be slow, even after it downloads everything. Since I've not found an easy way to make it run fast, I went back to Ant. The setup I'm going to describe runs faster than the Maven based one.

I tried the GWT4NB plugin for NetBeans, it works very well, but when I tested GWT for the first time, I used the tools created by Joakim Recht (GWT Task for Ant and GWT XDoclet). It looked smarter to me than using the wizards provided by an IDE. Now another…

Read more