| GWT Java AJAX Programming | |
| author | Prabhakar |
| pages | 240 |
| publisher | Packt Publishing |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | simon Kehle |
| ISBN | 1847191002 |
| summary | A great book for learning the different facets and features of GWT |
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Web 2.0 (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I think it would be nice to see Google work on a standard for 'application markup'. Perhaps lending a few developers to help move the XUL forward.
I can see the benefits of web based applications, but having to write a tonne of script to achieve such a basic HCI function as drag and drop is not whree I want to be.
Re:Web 2.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
I would simply preferr a rethink of the whole web application thing. I mean, I'm *so* tired of having to deal with tons of languages that don't work very well by themselves (imagine work together with others) and are not properly implemented in browsers....etc
I look at old designs such as the Unix with its services (read: small applications) and shell, wich provide the means to have applications interacting with each other in non-obvious ways and it makes me (pardon) sick of having to deal with such a messy place that is web applications.
Frankly, I would be very excited to see a single idiom on server/client side talking to each other without layers of translations and the like, and, of course, fully enjoying the power of scripts on browsers.
IMHO, there are many things wrong when it comes to web app, and I'm not sure the efforts are going in the right direction.
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Web 2.0 can be very much like Unix-style programs. (Score:2)
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For a Java developer like me (Who never feels comfortable with Javascripts), GWT is valuable. A swing like UI library like GWT gives you easy RPC and Serialization support. That's all that you need as an applicati
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To bad it uses Java. (Score:2)
I think a domain-specific markup language designed for high power web apps i
All of these frameworks are mostly overkill (Score:5, Funny)
Test code:
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
(Especially after posting 75 lines of ugly Javascript.)
Re:All of these frameworks are mostly overkill (Score:5, Funny)
For my next comedic number I will solve a quadratic equation.
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Oh, and you do realize that setting window.status no longer works on many browsers? It is considered a security hazard.
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One point of a framework is to standardize the things that you do, and do all the prep work to do them. There are good frameworks (ooh, a compiler that does linking!) and bad frameworks (Yay! Frontpage!). To say that a framework is a bad idea because you might need to work outside it is to argue a vague point. Pick the right framework and that doesn't happen.
Now, if you said GWT doesn't handle that, and provided examples, you may
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For everything else the answer is here [slashdot.org], I don't want to repeat myself.
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Yes, they're a little bloated. So is code written in Delphi, C++ Builder, Visual Studio, etc. Obviously, the more you abstract away the details, the more bloat you get. What you have to evaluate is whether or not you get enough of a benefit from that abstraction. In the GWT's case, that benefit is likely to com
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Some may need more complex frameworks, but most do not.
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My experience with GWT (Score:2, Interesting)
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However, for my next "clean" Ajax project I think I'm going to give GWT a try. I've don
Re:My experience with GWT (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the value proposition of GWT is that java is easier to maintain than javascript. There are probably a few javascript monkeys out there who don't know much java that don't agree, but most of the javascript (human written) that I see when I do "view source" out on the web is horrible stuff with negative maintainability.
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And that's a great idea, unless you have account for the fact that HTML/CSS/JS *aren't* application bytecodes.
There are lots of concerns in a web app that aren't there in compiled bytecode app:
1. data/code sharing among pages (number of file read requests, repeated data in every page)
2. incompatibilities among browsers (you
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1. data/code sharing among pages (number of file read requests, repeated data in every page)
2. incompatibilities among browsers (you rely on GWT for browser compatibility, it's frequently not accounting for some rather unobvious details, then you're screwed).
3. GWT goes against MVC as it follows a more traditional "apps and forms" paradigm, which means you're severaly limited in code reuse and separation of concerns in your a
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You know, I'll accept the rest of your comments as I truly don't know GWT well enough to be certain. I evaluated it, saw sufficient hurdles in using it and rejected it.
However, I don't need to look in the mirror and practice self-help exercises to know the obvious. If you've ever inspected the code of the google pages (the main google search page, googl
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You know I refuse to accept you're having sufficient experience with any of this if you'll be talking to me that you must absolutely have browser detection code branching to NEED to test in different browsers.
I've seen my share of out-of-nowhere bugs in browsers trying to interpret code they normally support but fail to render properly, including stuff like Firefox improperly rendering the DOM tree if you nest relative and
Look into DomAPI (Score:2)
It's not free for commercial use, but the licenses are cheap. It is a very powerful and robust toolkit, not only does it do AJAX but also has a ton of useful GUI widgets and other core functions.
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I am in charge of a fairly large web app (hundreds of thousands of lines of Java, JavaScript, and AJAX). I looked into GWT when it first came out - it only took me about 20 minutes of fiddling with the demos to realize that a) This is a great toolkit for basing a web app off of and b) this is a horrible toolkit to tie into.
The things that make GWT so great are what makes it near impossible to integr
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GWT is open source and accepts external contributions.
the issue of layout (Score:2)
If you like the idea of web programming feeling like writing an applet, GWT is just the thing.
Probably my biggest concern after evaluating it was the layout issue; though I guess the "AbsolutePanel" or that "Instantiations GWT Designer" Eclipse plugin might help... along with hunkering down and learning the damn CSS....
Still, programmatic layout is kind of an odd duck.
Also, is it "easy" to add in 3rd party javascript widgets, per se? Seemed a little akward, or at least un-GWT
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I dunno, it seems like even old fashioned tables and CSS might be a more reliable way of accurately reproducing a screenshot into a screen...
I prefer Yahoo's YUI (Score:3, Informative)
First, on the page http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/ [yahoo.com] the Yahoo "JavaScript Architect" Douglas Crockford gives some really *excellent* learning presentations on JS and the DOM that convinced me that there are really knowledgable people whos philosophy I like too.
Second, the license is BSD - it can hardly be any more free.
Last, if I have to rely on a framework I want to be sure it stays around. So even if some of the others are nice too and would fit, I must say I trust Yahoo a lot more to stay around and improve their framework - especially since they use it themselves for everything they do.
I also must say that I wasn't impressed at all when I finally tried GMail a few weeks ago, as a regular user of Yahoo mail for all my "public" mail (my own domain has 4000 email addresses left but I prefer Yahoo because of the excellent Spam-filter and only use my own domain-address for close friends) I find the Yahoo mail interface superior and much nicer.
What's more, there's YUI-ext, an extension for YUI (and now available for Jquery too), which provides some great-looking and very functional add-ons: http://www.jackslocum.com/blog/index.php [jackslocum.com]
GWT online documentation is sufficient (Score:2)
See for yourself, use the section "Creating an Application from Scratch (without Eclipse)" at http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/gettingstarted.h tml [google.com] (using command line tools).
I keep the GWT "Kitchen Sink" examples source handy to copy CSS, code, etc.
GWT is very cool, especially if you need to build one large application. I must say though, if you j
Square Pegs, Round Holes (Score:2)
Maybe this isn't targetted to me, but I just don't get it. I'm a solid Ruby developer, and Rails offers a similar feature, "RJS." You write your DOM changes in ruby, which gets compiled to javascript and executed by the client on an XHR call. This is fine for simple effects, but useless for real javascript apps.
What's the advantage? Keeping everything in one language? That sounds like a wrapper for writing your C apps in assembly.
IDE tools available as well (Score:2)
upload tag (Score:2)
GWT in production (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.ociweb.com/mark/GWT.html#WhoIsUsingIt [ociweb.com]
---
check out => http://traceurl.com/rdS?r=1&l=2 [traceurl.com]
AJAX is NOT irrelevant... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you're crazy. Have you looked at the source code of "classic" CGI pages that do a full form post and then return back to the same page... all the while trying to retain the state of existing fields or refresh the screen dynamically based on a selection? Gimme a break. Go read some of the "classic" source code in Bugzilla som
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Saying you don't need AJAX for anything isn't right. If you really can make your applications more user-friendly and avoid using bloated technol
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Every so often, someone wants to start using AJAX and automatic form reposting and a bunch of stuff that makes their code unreadabale and unmaintainable by the rest of the crew.
Well, there's you're problem. You shouold never look at the javascript code GWT generates anymore than you should look at the Java bytecode javac generates. Raw javascript might be OK for small applications, but for large, complex, apps it gets increasingly difficult to read, debug and maintain. And you can't build applicatio
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LoB