Google Web Toolkit Goes Open Source

The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is now an open source project. The GWT is a Java development framework designed to help web programmers easily write AJAX applications like Google's own GMail or Maps. The GWT was announced back in May of this year, but today's open sourcing move means that the previously closed, binary-only, portions of the kit are now available to developers.

With GWT, developers can code and debug AJAX applications in Java and then deploy applications using the GWT compiler to translate the Java application to browser-compliant JavaScript.

The guidelines for the GWT outline the following workflow:

1. Use your favorite Java IDE to write and debug an application in the Java language, using as many (or as few) GWT libraries as you find useful.
2. Use GWT's Java-to-JavaScript compiler to distill your application into a set of JavaScript and HTML files that you can serve with any web server.
3. Confirm that your application works in each browser that you want to support, which usually takes no additional work.

One of the reasons Google initially created GWT was to use it for their own development. Programs like GMail are incredibly difficult to create and debug because of myriad of differences between web browsers.

As the GWT homepage puts it, GWT makes creating AJAX applications, “easy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language.”

Interestingly, in addition to open-sourcing the code, the GWT developers have also released their entire development process to the public. The new “Making GWT Better” page includes development discussions, code reviews, future milestones, and the codebase for developers to browse through.

If you're a web developer navigating the treacherous waters of AJAX development, you might want to give GWT a try.