Wirelexsoft has introduced an IDE platform for developing Ajax applications based on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT).
The Java software development framework from Google, available at its Code site for download, assists developers in creating dynamic web applications. Those applications will work in IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, and Opera, generally without needing specialized tweaks for browsers.
Many developers work in an Eclipse IDE, and that experience should translate well to those who pick up the VistaFei for GWT IDE from Wirelexsoft. The development environment has been built on Eclipse, and includes its drag-and-drop and other functionality.
Within VistaFei, developers can access various wizards to create new GWT projects. The GWT compiler and debugger may be invoked transparently through the IDE as needed. A beta version can be obtained online.
Google created their toolkit to help developers traverse the murky waters of crafting applications, as they noted on the GWT site:
Writing dynamic web applications today is a tedious and error-prone process; you spend 90% of your time working around subtle incompatibilities between web browsers and platforms, and JavaScript’s lack of modularity makes sharing, testing, and reusing AJAX components difficult and fragile.
GWT lets you avoid many of these headaches while offering your users the same dynamic, standards-compliant experience. You write your front end in the Java programming language, and the GWT compiler converts your Java classes to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.
GWT does the Java to JavaScript translation for several reasons, refactoring and the opportunity to catch JavaScript errors at compile rather than runtime among them. Google also noted “Java-based OO designs are easier to communicate and understand,” as it pertains to documentation.
And we all know how much developers love commenting and documentation, right?
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
