At the 2006 JavaOne event, a certain company by the name of Google (they're very big in the search market, apparently) caused quite a buzz with the shock announcement of a new open source API for developing Ajax-heavy web applications.
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GWT--Google Web Toolkit--is Google's attempt to tame Ajax, making it a viable option for small-team and/or cost-conscious web applications development. And with a name like Google behind it, perhaps it's no wonder that so many are casting a inquisitive eye over this strange new technology.
This quick-start tutorial aims to translate some of the knowledge gained from my monkeying about with GWT into a useful text which will get other developers up and running quickly. To keep things nice and simple, we'll focus on only client-side matters. But fear not--you'll be surprised by what GWT can do without continual feeding via server round-trips.
Whether you're a web developer or not, Ajax is a term you cannot fail to have heard over the last 12 to 18 months. Loosely put, the term describes a collaboration of technologies in which client-side DOMs are married to JavaScript, backed by on-demand web requests for XML data. Hailed by some as heralding a new age of feature-rich web applications, damned by others as a tangled mess with more implementation quirks than one can shake a stick at--what few deny is that professional-quality Ajax coding is hard and painful.
So what's on offer here?
* From a GUI point of view, GWT does for Ajax what AWT (Abstract Window Toolkit) did for the desktop: it creates a set of abstract, browser-neutral components (or "widgets," in GWT parlance) ready made for rich client-side interfaces.
* GWT also attempts to tame traditional web application headaches, such as browser page history issues.
* GWT provides support for JSON and an RPC API, designed to take much of the sting out of communicating and exchanging sophisticated data models between client and server.
* Perhaps most tantalizing of all, GWT promises to bring the power of Java testing, profiling, and debugging into developing Ajax applications, thanks to a schizophrenic approach that uses both Java- and JavaScript-centric environments.
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