Showing posts with label GWT 2.0.0. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GWT 2.0.0. Show all posts

Friday, June 11, 2010

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:



Thursday, December 10, 2009

Upgrading GWT code from version 1.7 to version 2.0

I have already starting converting several of my GWT apps from older version of GWT to version 2.0.  According to this link the steps are as follows.

There are 3 tasks involved when upgrading a GWT 1.7 project to a GWT 2.0 project:
  • Download GWT 2.0 and update your launch configurations
  • HostedMode has been replaced by DevMode, so you will need to update your Eclipse project settings accordingly.
  • Tests now run in HtmlUnit by default. You will need to modify some of your tests to work with HtmlUnit.


So far I have not run into any issues with upgrading.  As of this post I have not seen any mention of a GWT 2.0 Incubator file, but my apps seem happy with the older version gwt-incubator-july-14-2009.jar.  I have seen several warnings however while compiling with this version such as:



         [WARN] Line 102: Referencing deprecated class 'com.google.gwt.widgetideas.table.client.overrides.HTMLTable'
         [WARN] Line 103: Referencing deprecated class 'com.google.gwt.widgetideas.table.client.overrides.Grid'
         [WARN] Line 104: Referencing deprecated class 'com.google.gwt.widgetideas.table.client.overrides.Grid'
         [WARN] Line 104: Referencing deprecated class 'com.google.gwt.widgetideas.table.client.overrides.HTMLTable'

GWT 2.0.0 is here. Get your copy today!

You can now download and start using GWT version 2.0.  If you are using Eclipse the links are below, and of course if you are already using Eclipse then you should be able to update to the latest plugin and GWT version automatically.

Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo)
http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.5
Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede)
http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.4
Eclipse 3.3 (Europa)
http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.3

If you would like to download the latest version of GWT without using Eclipse you can find the download here.


Some of the new changes:
Speed Tracer
Speed Tracer is a Chrome Extension that allows you to pinpoint performance problems in your web applications.
Downloading & getting started with Speed Tracer for Google Chrome


Speed tracer tutorial video


What's New in GWT 2.0?


New Features
  • Development Mode
  • Speed Tracer
  • Developer Guided Code Splitting
  • Compiler Optimizations
  • Draft Compile
  • Declarative User Interfaces
  • Layout Panels
  • Bundled Resources via ClientBundle
  • HtmlUnit for Testing
Video of changes in GWT Version 2.0:



Google Web Toolkit Gallery


Google Web Toolkit Showcase of Features