What is your experience with GWT?

Question

Do you find the Google Web Toolkit to be a useful project? Are there licensing issues?

Answer 1

GWT is great because it handles many of the issues with different browser which if you aren't familiar with can be quite the hassle. It also facilitates creation of the GUI into a more programmatic manner which is also a big plus from a non-web designer POV. Take a look at GWT's Showcase (which features live examples with code) to get an idea of the GUI that you can easily use (and extend). Another nice feature is that, you can easily internationalize your application (read this article for one way to do it). Also when Google compiles it they optimize the code which is a plus. Plenty of other libraries to add functionality easily as well.

You basically do anything you could have done with HTML+JavaScript (Steve Reed's example shows you how to use JavaScript within Java). You can even port JavaScript library into Java and use them like you would any Java class.

Overall, Google has done a pretty good job with it (it works wonderfully well in Eclipse and is documented). However it is the first web framework (?) that I've gotten serious into so I think it's pretty good and may be biased. Something to note though: the Hosted Mode browser is essentially Internet Explorer so you do need to compile and view it in different browser.