Friday, Dec 11, 2009    Text size: 

According to its website, "Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. GWT is used by many products at Google, including Google Wave and Google AdWords. It's open source, completely free, and used by thousands of developers around the world."

GWT is credited for its use in developing Google applications including Google Wave and AdWords 3.0. The toolkit is used to transform Java code into JavaScript which runs natively in web browsers.

"We use Google Web Toolkit for all our Java-based internal apps," Google CIO Ben Fried said. "In addition to the big benefits in developer productivity GWT offers, the future-proofing and browser independence you get out of the box mean that we're protected from the problems caused by browser-specific bugs and exploits."

The new Speed Tracer feature helps troubleshoot performance issues through the visualization of key metrics surrounding the application's runtime within the browser software, such as conflicts between JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Other new features include 'code-splitting,' which improves start-up speeds; enhancements to the JavaScript compiler; and a code condensation tool called UiBinder, designed to make code smaller and easier to maintain.

"UiBinder is a great way for programmers to collaborate with UI designers who are more comfortable with XML, HTML and CSS than Java source code," stated a company rep.

The GWT is available as a free download.