Over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing with two of the latest web framework offerings. Of course both advertise to dramatically increase the ease of web application development (while shouting the obligatory, "AJAX!"), yet they are quite different.

Adobe Spry framework for Ajax
Although I found the Adobe Spry demo applications to be compelling, they ran a bit slow for me (yes, running locally). I also didn’t see much new here; just a combination of things that had wowed me previously. For example, the transitions between images in the Photo Gallery were a bit rougher than LightBox. The RSS Reader was well put together, although I can’t see myself using (and maintaining) something like this when so may other (integrated) options exist. The Product Table seemed a lot like the Accordian example found on the Rico web site.

Moreover, I encountered several 404 and JavaScript errors (using an extremely mainstream browser) on the Spry site. JS errors are inexcusable for a framework that states in its opening sentence, "The Spry framework for Ajax is a JavaScript library..."

I did incorporate my son’s web site into the Spry Photo Galley. Doing so was easy, but fairly time consuming. To be fair, the Spry home page states very clearly that this is a preview build, but there just wasn’t enough to entice me to dig in further.

Google Web Toolkit
Many of my fellow Java developers thumb their noses at JavaScript; and not entirely for bad reasons. Last month I mentioned that there are many tools out there with which to debug JavaScript, but I certainly acknowledge that they are not as robust as those that you get with your favorite Java IDE. Browser incompatibilities continue to be the source of much pain. Thus, the "Web Application Developer Class System" continues to prevent Java folk from embracing front-end technologies. Enter the Google Web Toolkit or "GWT."

While Rick Hightower’s claim that GWT might be the most important announcement at JavaOne may not be saying much, it did get me interested. According to the GWT web site:

The GWT Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language. 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.

Pretty cool, eh? The GWT is not open source, but it is freely available for all to use. There’s even an Eclipse plugin. GWT does not attempt to consume your entire system architecture, leaving you free to use the server-side (Java) toolkits and frameworks that you already know and love. Moreover, GWT is extensible. This means that you can continue to use all those JavaScript widgets that have become so popular these days.

I haven’t dug in too deeply with either of these frameworks. If my excitement with GWT sticks, I will certainly share my experiences with it in this space.