Getting started with Google Web Toolkit
Web Worker

© Kirsty pargeter, Fotolia
The Ingenious Google Web Toolkit builds optimized JavaScript applications in a hurry.
I have lost many days, weeks, possibly even months to JavaScript. The recent rise of JavaScript frameworks – and their increasing stability – has helped. The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) [1] looks like the next evolutionary stage in JavaScript development: Instead of writing in JavaScript, you can write in Java.
GWT is an environment for building optimized JavaScript applications that are cross-browser compatible. With GWT, you build JavaScript applications by coding in Java and compiling the code to highly optimized JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. As much as you might like working on intricate little cross-browser JavaScript bugs, there comes a point when enough is enough. GTW came along just before I reached my breaking point.
Looking Closer
GWT provides a library of layouts, form elements, and other components for building web apps. Instead of adding JavaScript/AJAX on top of raw HTML and CSS, you can use higher level Java components that GWT compiles to browser-safe JavaScript that probably won't need debugging.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)