Google Web Toolkit

Google released on 15th May 2006 their own AJAX toolkit, which they used in order to build gmail, gcalendar, gMaps.

demos : All available widgets All application examples

The innovation is in the java-to-javascript compiler : you can code and debug everything in the UI using only java langage then generate the js/html and deploy it.

All recent browsers are supported in the web (ajax) mode. The javascript library to download with web mode is 100 ko. The available UI widgets can be extended with new ones, and support CSS; additional custom js functions can be inserted nicely if you need. Available widgets with drag'n drop are still lacking.

A RPC protocol (JSON) is included, as well as browser history management (support of the browser's back button).

Licence for GWT code, including JRE basic packages emulation in javascript, is Apache 2. The development tools (compiler and support for hosted browser mode) remains free but closed source.

A hosted browser mode is also available to deploy the pure java classes within an applet container (or within an Eclipse JVM).

The SDK is running on windows and Linux, JDK1.4.2.

Google Web ToolKit