Free online GWT/GAE Book

If you are looking for a great source on developing with the Google Web Toolkit and Google App Engine check out this free online book. Link is below.

gwt-gae-book - Project Hosting on Google Code

GWT 2.1 Released, download now

See what is new with Version 2.1 of GWT.
Download GWT 2.1.
You can also download the latest version of GWT using the download links on the right hand of this page ->

Latest Trunk Build of GWT Available Now

Often I find that waiting for the next build of GWT just takes too long.  Well this is not really true, builds of GWT come out as quickly as the GWT team can produce them.

So what if you are looking for the latest trunk build of GWT?  You can always build your own copy by checking out the source, checking out the tools, installing Apache Ant and then compiling the GWT code yourself as found here.  One thing about compiling it yourself is that it takes a while to complete, like upwards of an hour.

A few weeks ago I had a chance to start using Hudson to automatically build some of my GWT projects, then the though occurred to me that I could also use Hudson to build the latest trunk of GWT when there there is a source code change and then post the resulting output file.

As of today I am happy to share that you can download the latest GWT Trunk from my google code project. The project name is horrible as it does not have anything to do with GWT, but if you are looking for the latest GWT trunk build I am sure you can look past the poor project name.
If you would like to watch for the latest build via RSS you can use this feed here to watch for the latest trunk build.

Remember trunk builds of GWT are probably not something you want to move into a production environment, but sometimes you need the latest GWT build.

Quick Links:
My Google code project download section (get GWT trunk builds here).
RSS feed of the latest GWT trunk builds.

Instantiations purchased by Google

According to the Instantiations web site they have been purchased by Google.  Here is a little info from their site:

We’re excited to announce that Instantiations is now part of Google!
Yes it’s true. Instantiations’ award-winning Java and Ajax development tools and our incredible Eclipse team have been acquired by Google. We are all very excited about taking our technology and team to the next level - and there is no bigger step up than Google!........

They also said that you should watch the official GWT blog for more information and I assume an official announcement from Google.
Google Web Toolkit Blog

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:

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