On Jan 16, 2008, at 9:09 AM, Manuel Molaschi wrote:
GWT should be a great choice... but what about a more low-level
AJAX integration with less frameworks dependency?
I think there are 2 great client-side solutions:
Ext-js: ext has a stunning javascript rendering and a long list of
widgets, but a hard learning curve and it is not so simple to
integrate with server-side java (dwr?)
Mootools: mootools is a great javascript library and has a growing
community (check the forum!). It is not really a widget UI
framework (even if there are a lot of plugins) but it standardize
javascript syntax ensuring very rapid development hiding browsers
differences.
Ext-JS is very nice... So nice in fact, there is a GWT project that
implements it into the GWT framework :) (thus reducing the learning
curve and increasing the usability... plus - you can use GWT's native
stuff to do the server-side java communication using whatever method
you want)
http://code.google.com/p/gwt-ext/
(FYI - Most of the major external frameworks have projects that allow
you to easily hook into GWT - (scriptaculous, yui... etc). )
The real benefit of GWT is of course when you use the java-native
stuff for your widgets and such. You can link into gigantic
libraries, but because of the static analysis that GWT does - it will
only compile in the small portion that you use.
On Jan 16, 2008, at 9:17 AM, Ruben Reusser wrote:
Isn't GWT lacking drag and drop support? I really would miss that
in the admin interface afterwards. You could also consider an
OpenLaszlo Replacement of the Admin GUI
GWT out of the box doesn't have a drag and drop library. It has been
extended to have drag-and-drop support by the google-dnd project. The
level of drag-and-drop available in this library, in fact, is the
best I have ever seen in a javascript library.
http://code.google.com/p/gwt-dnd/
A good example of the drag-and-drop in action is here - there are 13
different demo scenarios where they show it being used.
http://allen-sauer.com/com.allen_sauer.gwt.dnd.demo.DragDropDemo/
DragDropDemo.html
What is good about that examples page, is that you can view the java
source that is generating that page. When you see the java code you
would write to implement that kind of functionality, you can see why
I like GWT...
You can design a java server side layer of services (json, rest,
ws) separeted from the client side (view) layer and create an ajax
communication layer (maybe comet!)
You can do this with GWT also - I just suggested the servlet approach
since it's incredibly easy. You can do GWT stuff as a pure client-
side approach and not even touch the server-side aspect of it. Doing
so you still get the benefit of writing your client code in Java and
debugging it in Java.
The code is very clean, readable and compact
You can make GWT export code in a "readable" way - which produces
small readable code that closely resembles the java code. For
production, you use the "obfuscated mode" which cranks it down to
incredibly optimized code that loads fast and runs fast.
In any case, if you have never had a chance to play with GWT - you
should really take it for a spin. It does take a few hours (maybe one
afternoon?) to understand how exactly the pieces work together - but
once you dive in and play with it a bit, it's really easy to use. If
you have IntelliJ 7 - you can use the GWT Studio to make a "GWT
Sample App" that has a simple Hello World project to play with as a
starting point.
Ryan
