New GWT 2 Development book: Essential GWT

I recently had the opportunity to be one of the technical editors for the book Essential GWT: Building for the Web with Google Web Tookit 2.

Some of the topics in the book are:


Getting started 

• Some background on GWT, what it is, etc.
• Understanding the tools you will need while developing with GWT such as Eclipse
• Client side code vs server side code
• OOPHM, compiler options, GWT application layout.

 Client Side Coding

• User interface programming
• Form designing using HTML, XML, UiBinder.
• Other GWT packages such as ExtGWT

Server Communications

• Remote Procedure Calls 
• Communicating with other serivces like XML and JSON
• Sending and receiving files

Building rich internet applications

• Integrating JavaScript and calling it from GWT
• Exception handling
• Using other services and APIs such as Google search, Yahoo search
• Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (i10n)
• Testing your GWT app with Junit and test cases

I really enjoyed being a technical editor for this book.  The author Federico Kereki did a great job covering just about every topic you would need to create a powerful GWT application.

There were a couple of topics that were not covered in much detail, but I find they are things that I use in my daily GWT development:

1. Building ANT tasks that can automate your build process.  I have built scripts that compile server side code, gwt code and deploy to my Tomcat server of choice.  

2. Using GWT app engine with your GWT application.  You can either pay to have Tomcat hosting on the internet or you can use GWT app engine to host your GWT project for free.

I highly recommend this book, you can pickup a copy from Amazon: