Comments on: Why I dumped GWT

By: Rich @ Website Builder

Rich @ Website Builder — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:58:53 +0000

Great article! I am the architect of my site and I decided to do exactly what you are recommending for the same reasons you have mentioned. We have injected GWT in locations where we wanted to give the user a rich user experience.

By: Quchie

Quchie — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:58:20 +0000

Cant we use mod_rewrite for Search Engine index?

By: Google Web Toolkit: Tools and Tutorials to Get You Started | Geeky Bitch

Google Web Toolkit: Tools and Tutorials to Get You Started | Geeky Bitch — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:27:15 +0000

[...] Why I Dumped GWT Pieter goes into details as to why he doesn’t develop with the Google Web Toolkit after one and a half years with the toolkit. He goes over reasons like SEO, Adsense customization, and others. [...]

By: RaiulBaztepo

RaiulBaztepo — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:44:34 +0000

Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo

By: BrainBakery » Google Web Toolkit: AJAX development that doesn’t hurt.

BrainBakery » Google Web Toolkit: AJAX development that doesn’t hurt. — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:33:12 +0000

[...] Why I dumped GWT [...]

By: Google Web Toolkit: Tools and Tutorials to Get You Started

Google Web Toolkit: Tools and Tutorials to Get You Started — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:07:13 +0000

By: chris.f.jones

chris.f.jones — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:59:00 +0000

As far as the google analytics thing goes, we do the following with our gwt app:
1. Make your app support the history mechanism in gwt and make each logical page view a new history item (this is also good for your users in that it makes their back button function)
2. in the historyListener for your app, just make a native call to the urchinTracker, i.e. if ($wnd.urchinTracker) $wnd.urchinTracker($wnd.location);

3. voila! instant inflated stats!

By: Pieter Coucke

Pieter Coucke — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:14:00 +0000

Thank you for your feedback. I agree that GWT isn't a good fit for my site as it is now (and GWT never claimed to be used for this), hence the reason of this post. But probably I didn't explain the reasoning very well.

Please see my follow-up post post.

By: Ray Cromwell

Ray Cromwell — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:28:00 +0000

Couple of points:

1) GWT is more than just a widget library. You can totally ignore gwt-user if you want and implement a moo-like interface using GWT (and it will load and run faster)

2) Whether or not your GWT app is an empty HTML page with just a BODY tag, or if you attach Widgets to existing HTML is a matter of how you design your app. Using traditional JS libraries like ExtJS , you can also do 100% of page layout in Javascript and have almost no content in HTML.

3) Yes, the existing GWT Widgets are not designed to envelope/attach to existing DOM elements that well. However, there are well known workarounds.

4) You can use GWT-Ext or MyGWT libraries which do have methods for overlaying widget functionality onto existing DOM elements

I would point out, that if you just want to spray a tiny bit of DHTML functionality into an HTML app, then GWT is probably not for you, and I don't believe Google has been encouraging people to use GWT just to attach a single autocomplete Widget toa page.

However, once you build a non-trivial DHTML app, the GWT approach will pay off, in terms of scaling the size of the code base, to debugging and rich tool chains, to superior size and performance characteristics.

GWT is not really about replacing jQuery or Moo or Scriptaculous for piece-meal AJAX effects.

-Ray

By: Pieter Coucke

Pieter Coucke — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:11:00 +0000

I’ve tried the methods in the DOM class. However, I had several issues because most widget methods like add() only accept a widget, not an element. I also had problems with the event handling, because onclick event were not fired anymore (I’m sure there’s a solution, but I couldn’t find it).

What I wanted to do was something like DOM.getByCSS(“a.facet”) and then replace the href with an ajax call (which is easy in Mootools).