| 19 May 2006
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Google's GWT Creates Excitement
It is rare in the software community that a single announcement
could cause as much stir as this one has.
Google has introduced of the
Google Web Toolkit (GWT).
In a nutshell GWT is a framework that
simplifies the process of building Ajax applications by supporting
their construction in the Java language followed by translation
into JavaScript Ajax.
This is the same technology used in several Google products, especially
the Google Maps application.
In addition to providing the framework, the GWT system includes
access to the Java-to-Javascript translator,
indended to make the transition from a pure-Java version of an application
to an Ajax-implemented version much simpler.
Coming along with the GWT announcement is
the simultaneous availability of the
Official GWT Discussion Forum.
In the first 24 hours of operation there were about 500 posts in over 200 topics.
And, perhaps an indicator of more direct Google involvement in the technology than is normal,
Bret Taylor, Google's GWT Product Manager,
actually signed some of the responses to several of the more-general questions.
Where this fits into the Java technology area,
the Ajax movement,
the open source software movement,
(most especially the Eclipse system)
and how this affects Microsoft --
these are all exciting issues that remain to be explicated.
For our part we're confident that the technology we have will continue
to work well on heavy-Javascript applications.
For the rest we will just have to wait and see.
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