GWT In-depth Introduction

A few months I did a training on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), so I thought I'd share the presentation:



Note that it was made before GWT 1.5 was out, and I did a bunch of live demos that aren't included in the presentation (no video, sorry). Enjoy, and let me know if you liked it.

I have used GWT since the first release and having previous experience with Swing (Java GUI library) I found it very easy to learn and use. I have noticed that the layout Panels can display a bit different on different browsers, so good knowledge of CSS is handy. It's really a pleasure to work with OO design in Java as opposed to Javascript. The other major benefit of GWT is the RPC mechanism which allows you to reuse Model objects (with some limitations due to Serialization and other things given the nature of the Client's environment--a browser).

I got two books on GWT almost for free thanks to a coupon I won at my local Java Users Group. One is "Google Web Toolkit Solutions" by David Geary, which is excellent, and the other one I don't remember the name, which is good because I don't recommend it (I'll update this post once I check the name of it).

The latest version as of this writing (1.5.2) is the first official release with support for annotations and other goodies from Java 1.5, which makes things even better. Of course there are a lot of improvements with the default CSS themes/layouts, more and better widgets, and lots of optimizations.

We currently have a POC application that unfortunately I can't show, but once it is released, you'll be the first ones to know!

Surfeando en Ohio

Aquí les mando prueba de que en pleno invierno se puede surfear en Ohio (bueno, casi surfear).

Estuvimos en el Kalahari de Sandusky, Ohio, un parque acuático bajo techo.





[El video no tiene sonido]