Linux & Open Systems

Ajax is everywhere these days, and although Ajax can simplify and improve user experience, the experience of Ajax developers is often far from simple and could stand improvement. Perhaps the biggest headache Ajax developers face is the painful world of cross-browser problems. Browser quirks add untold hours of aggravation to even the best planned Ajax projects. Something that works perfectly well in Firefox doesn't work properly in Internet Explorer, for example. Wouldn't it be great if there were a way to concentrate on designing a great application and not have to worry about getting it to work properly in multiple browsers? That's the goal of Google Web Toolkit.

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java development framework that allows Java developers to leverage their years of experience to build applications directly in Java, using the wealth of tools and best practices they already know so well, and then use GWT to translate the Java into JavaScript that runs well in multiple browsers without fussing over browser quirks.

David Geary's book, Google Web Toolkit Solutions, helps Java developers write excellent GWT applications. The author's goal is to "teach you how to kick ass with GWT."

This is not a book for GWT newbies. The authors (Geary's co-author is former Sun developer, author, and consultant Rob Gordon) very clearly explain in the beginning of the book that their aim is to put GWT developers into the fast lane--not to help people brand new to GWT get started. They don't explain how to acquire and install GWT. They do not supply a "hello world" example. Instead, they dive deeply into practical, non-contrived solutions experienced developers will appreciate.

If you're an experienced programmer, have some experience with GWT, and want a guide to an assortment of practical solutions, this is a great book for you. If you don't have programming experience, or if you're brand new to GWT, you'll want to learn a bit more elsewhere before tackling this book. Also, note that by "programming experience" I don't necessarily mean "Ajax programming experience" because one of the strengths of GWT is you needn't know much about Ajax to create Ajax applications. A Java developer with no Ajax experience, for instance, will find Google Web Toolkit Solutions very useful.

The 370 page book is organized into 12 chapters, each of which carefully explores a solution. The first solution is an overview of GWT fundamentals. Concepts covered in this chapter include: an introduction to GWT widgets, the anatomy of a GWT application, using GWT panels, and implementing remote procedure calls.

The 11 solutions that follow are: JavaScript integration, custom widget implementation, viewports and maps, access to online web services, drag and drop, simple windows, flex tables, file uploads, hibernate integration, deployment to an external server, and GWT and legacy code. Each solution begins with "stuff you're going to learn" that prepares the reader for the upcoming concepts, and ends with "stuff we covered in this solution" that reinforces the new concepts the reader just learned.

Geary has created a companion website that contains demos of all the solutions in the book. If you're curious about GWT, this companion website is a great place to see some working examples of GWT in action. The site also includes errata and other information that compliments the physical book.

It's worth mentioning that there seems to be a bit of confusion in these early days of GWT about how GWT compares to a framework like Ruby on Rails. GWT and Rails differ from one another and have different goals. While Rails is designed as an end-to-end solution that handles every aspect of the Model-View-Controller paradigm, GWT is essentially a client-side-only framework, aside from its support for Remote Procedure Calls to make queries against the server.

It's also worth mentioning that GWT doesn't entirely banish cross-browser problems. Even on the companion website, Geary discusses cross-browser problems that affect the solutions found in the book that you can verify yourself by using the demos in various browsers. That said, if the choice is between a few browser quirks squeaking past GWT and many browser quirks disrupting a regular Ajax development project, I for one would opt for GWT.

If you're planning on using Ajax and want to beef up your GWT skills, I highly recommend Google Web Toolkit Solutions. It's packed with practical information that will help you use GWT to its fullest, and the author's expertise, unabashed enthusiasm for the subject, and charismatic personality are evident in abundance throughout the text. David Geary wants you to kick ass with GWT, and with his book at the ready, you will.