Joehl Webber announce the second release candidate of of GWT 1.5. Here's small excerpt from this announce:

«This release candidate includes a number of enhancements and fixes above and
beyond those included in the first release candidate. Please see the release
notes included in the installation archive for details. We will be updating
the public documentation and posting further details on the Google Web
Toolkit blog soon. »

Bruce Johnson post a tutorial about using the JSNI in GWT. He writes:

«The next and hopefully last release candidate for GWT 1.5 is almost upon us. In anticipation, we'd like to really crank up the excitement level and, well, the sheer geek factor of this here blog.

If you are new to GWT, you may be wondering what all the excitement is about. Why is GWT different from other framework-style solutions? GWT is more of a tool chain and a baseline technology rather than a particular application framework. So, although GWT has lots of libraries, you can use as many or as few as you find useful. Don't like GWT's UI? You can build your own using the DOM classes. Want to use JSON instead of RPC? It's easy. In fact, it is completely possible to start from scratch and build your own framework using GWT and benefit just as much from GWT's overall approach to debugging and compilation. »

Source: Google Web Toolkit Blog.

The gchart allows you to build the ghraphs on GWT without JSNI, plugins, or server round-trips. The author of gchart writes:
«The main idea behind GChart is simple: You can make very nice charts efficiently out of a reasonably small number of 1-cell Grids (for the aligned labels) and (empty) Images (for everything else), styled and positioned appropriately on an AbsolutePanel. Not surprisingly, bar charts don't suffer at all under the limitations imposed by this strategy--but (as long as you don't mind using dotted connecting lines or banded-filled pie slices) line and pie charts also do remarkably well.»

Source:gChart.

ExtGWT 1.0 released. Here's the list of main highlights of this release:

• GWT 1.5 compatibility

• Improved performance

• Demo applications

• Advanced form layouts

• Improved data loading, store, binder, and field API

• Imroved documentation

Source:ExtJS Blog.

Rajeev Dayal post a presentation about building large AJAX applications with GWT 1.4 and Google Gears. Topics discussed include an overview of GWT, integrating GWT with other frameworks, GWT 1.4 features, developing large GWT applications, integrating GWT and Google Gears, the architecture of a Google Gears application, Google Gears features and the Google Gears API.

Source: InfoQ.

Shalk Neethling post an articler in which he tells about the GWT in details. Here the small excerpt from this article:

«The GWT compiler is the fulcrum of GWT. The entire approach GWT takes, encapsulating browser differences and compiling JavaScript from Java, is made possible by the design and architecture of the compiler.

The GWT compiler compiles Java into JavaScript, but it’s important to understand that the compiler doesn’t compile Java the same way javac does. The GWT compiler is really a Java source to JavaScript source translator.

The GWT compiler needs hints about the work that it must perform partly because it operates from source. These hints come in the form of the module descriptor, the marker interfaces that denote serializable types, the JavaDoc style annotations used in serializable types for collections, and more.

Although these hints may sometimes seem like overkill, they’re needed because the GWT compiler will optimize your application at compile time. This doesn’t just mean compressing the JavaScript naming to the shortest possible form; it also includes pruning unused classes, and even methods and attributes, from your code. The core engineering goal of the GWT compiler is summarized succinctly: you pay for what you use.»

Source: DZone.

Jan Ehrhard post a tutorial about developing application on GWT UI with Grails. Here's the list of topic discussed in this article:

• Prepare your system

• Creating your domain model

• Creating a service for GWT client

• The GWT client

• Additional notes

Source:derjanandhisblog

Kris Musial developed SUDOKU Challenge game using the GWT

Source: SUDOKU Challlenge.

Alan Williamson post an intresting article in his blog, in which he describe the advantages of GWT and telling how he has moved from ExtJS to GWT:

«Javascript as a language misses a lot of the constructs that modern day object orientated languages have. Defining a class in Javascript is not an exact science, with a number of design patterns put forward to mimick behaviour. The biggest problem Javascript has is that its not compiled, so you never know if you have it right until you hit the "refresh" button in the browser. A single curly bracket or semicolon in the wrong place and the whole place can come crashing down around you.

However, the whole proposition of producing Javascript with another language (say Java) seemed a little 'round the houses' for me. I couldn't fathom why you would want to do such a thing. But after a year of hacking in and around ExtJS and other frameworks, you soon realized that Javascript is just one big hack. It's a wonder it runs at all!»

Source: Alaan Williamson's Blog.

Gwt-canvas widget adds consistent cross-browser support for the famous HTML Canvas to the Google Web Toolkit.

Just add gwt-canvas-<version>.jar to your Build Path, and add the following line to your GWT XML Module:

<inherits name='gwt.canvas.gwt-canvas'/>

Now import, create and add a canvas widget to your code and you are ready to go:

RootPanel.get().add(new Canvas());

GWT 1.5 M1 is needed for gwt-canvas.

Source: gwt.canvas.

The authors of the onGWT site has collected links on various articles about upcoming GWT 1.5 release, so you can get all information and rumors today.

Source: OnGWT.

Dietrich Kappe post small but useful collection of links on GWT resources for iPhone developers on the Agile Ajax site.

DatePickjer dialogbox widget that displays a small Gregorian calendar dates to select a date by the user.

It is fully internationalized by the default locale. It has options to display of dates form the adjacent dates months. If needed, special formatting can be added for a given day. Any date can be choosen the start date and the month grid. Today's date is the default selection and also the default displayed month.

Cyril Balit compares the grids in the three various technologies: Flex, GWT and ExtJS. He writes:

«The title is a little a canvasser but the purpose of this post is rather to get acquainted with 3 manners to make RIA and to compare them through a central component of an application: the grid.
I was thus used to recreate a simple screen containing a label, a button and a grid. »

Source: I.T. Aware.

Julien Viet wrote an article in whi he shows how to build in place editor with GWT. He writes:

«The in place editor is one of the simplest yet powerful feature brought by Ajax.

I wrote two such editors last year, one using javascript and one leveraging Prototype as an exercise. Recently I started to study GWT more in depth and I found fun to write a GWT version of the in place editor.

I used the TextBox and Label widgets that will be used to display and edit the label.

The DeckPanel panel is used to alternate the display between the text box and the label widgets.

The interaction is performed using listeners. The ClickListener on the label copies the label value to the text box and switch the deck panel to show the text box. The KeyboadListener allows on the enter keystroke to copy the edited value to the label and switch back the deck panel to show the label.»