gwt

With a project called Closure Tools, Google plans on Thursday to start helping developers who aspire to match the company's proficiency in creating Web sites and Web applications.

Google is a strong proponent of using JavaScript to write Web-based programs, part of its Web-centric ethos. Indeed, the company has pushed the language to its limits with services such as Gmail and Google Docs, and it developed its Chrome browser in part to enable JavaScript programs to run faster.

But writing, debugging, and optimizing heavy-duty JavaScript can be difficult--in part because a given JavaScript program sometimes works differently on different … Read more

Corrected at 11:53 a.m. PDT. See below for details.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--In a case of converging technologies, Google App Engine took several steps toward the mainstream on its first birthday Tuesday at the same time that the concept of cloud computing in general is becoming more accepted.

Cloud computing presents applications as Internet-accessible services rather than software that runs on corporate servers or people's own PCs. It can mean anything from raw computing services that can be bolted together, as in the case of Amazon Web Services, to finished products such as the Picnik photo-editing site or SalesForce.com customer-management service. Google App Engine is an intermediate level, offering a general-purpose foundation.

Thus far, App Engine had been limited to Web applications written in the Python programming language favored internally at Google but not as much elsewhere. But on Tuesday, the top-requested App Engine feature, support for Java programs, arrived--albeit only in a preview form initially available only to the first 10,000 developers who sign up.

"It's the language of the enterprise," said Ryan Nichols, leader of product management and marketing at Appirio, a 140-person start-up that builds software for clients who want cloud computing applications. "It allows us to have a different level of conversation with our customers."

Google announced the Java support and a handful of other new App Engine features on its blog and at a Campfire One event for developers at its headquarters here. As with the regular App Engine service, use within certain limits is free, but developers must pay for heavy-duty App Engine use.

… Read more

Red Hat is partnering with Google to build on Google's Web Toolkit (GWT), technology that enables users to cross-compile and optimize Java code as JavaScript for use in different browsers.

But what does this mean? Why should anyone care?

Rich Sharples, director of Product Management at Red Hat, suggests that GWT was the shortest route to cutting through the clutter of competing RIA solutions like Appcelerator, a startup that employs some JBoss veterans and which just raised $4.1 million in venture capital and wants to displace Adobe AIR and other Rich Internet Application (RIA) platforms...like GWT:

The world doesn't need another Java framework for developing rich AJAX apps. so we've decided to go with what we think is a real leader - Google Web Toolkit.

But Red Hat's work with GWT isn't about competitors, as Sharples told me in a follow-up email. It's about customers and developers, and offers significant insight to Red Hat's development strategy:

If there is a grand plan, it's to deliver what developers and customers actually want. We're a demand-driven business - if we don't give customers that they want then we face the prospect of having to compete with some much larger and much more powerful competitors on [their] terms [, not the customers'].

I think that JBoss/Red Hat represents a maturity with respect to how it views technology that I haven't seen anywhere else....[T]he reason we can punch way above our weight is because we've accepted that we don't have to be the sole source of innovation for everything we ship: we're willing to forego some control for the advantage of being able to deliver a technology stack composed of the best, most popular components.

That's practical because we've spent the last 3 years building a very flexible and adaptable server-side platform (JBoss AS 5.0.0) - the same run-time can be use to deploy stateless GWT apps., Spring apps., Ruby apps. or BPEL or Java EE / Seam apps. or whatever else comes along. We won't inflict a different run-time on customers just because they choose a new framework or technology. Operations people like stability and consistency. Developers like choice.

In other words, Red Hat's work with GWT is a chance for Red Hat to cater to developers already-expressed desires for a Red Hat RIA story, but within the context of the enterprise. This, of course, requires a developer focus, and for that I also asked Michael Neale, a senior engineer on the JBoss Drools project with Red Hat, to give me the developer perspective on Red Hat's GWT development:… Read more

Google plans to release later this week a near-final version of the Google Web Toolkit 1.5, software designed to ease the onerous parts of writing sophisticated Web-based software.

GWT 1.5 includes support for Java 5, a version of the Sun Microsystems programming language released in 2006, and produces software that runs about 1.2 to 2 times faster for complex Web applications, said Bruce Johnson, Google's engineering manager for GWT.

The new software fuels Google's ambition to make the Web a much richer software environment--an ambition on display Wednesday and Thursday at the Google I/… Read more

Google is expected to update its Google Web Toolkit (GWT) this week at its new developer conference, according to eWeek.

GWT is designed to help programmers write richer Internet applications using a beefed-up JavaScript programming technique called Ajax; the project was released as open-source software in 2006 with version 1.3, and the current version is 1.4. There are several GWT talks at the Google I/O conference.

Google has been working on improving GWT's performance, Java compatibility, and developer tools, eWeek said.