MOUNTAIN VIEW (December 9, 2009) – Yesterday Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced the newest version of Google Web Toolkit, an open source development toolkit used by thousands of developers around the world for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. The drastic improvements in browser speed and capabilities over the past year enable ever larger and richer web applications, but also require better development tools to take full advantage of them. Google Web Toolkit 2.0 is built for these new demands.
New features include:
- Performance Profiling with Speed Tracer: Speed Tracer is a new tool built using modern HTML5 technologies that allows developers to diagnose performance problems in the browser, providing insight that hasn’t been available before about low-level operations deep within the browser.
- Incremental Downloading with Code Splitting: As applications grow larger, developers want to ensure that their applications start as quickly as possible, without requiring application "boot up" time as the code downloads. Code Splitting enables developers to safely and easily slice and dice their application code so that key functionality can load immediately and other features can be loaded later as needed.
- Declarative UI with UiBinder: Team projects benefit from a workflow that allows smooth collaboration between designers and developers. UiBinder is a new declarative UI framework in Google Web Toolkit which enables rapid design iteration and a clean separation between presentation layer and application logic.
"The web is getting more powerful as an application platform and ever improving developer tools are playing a key role in this growth," said Andrew Bowers, Product Manager at Google. "Google Web Toolkit’s performance and productivity enhancements have been tried and tested over the past year with Google teams that are pushing the boundaries of web apps – products like Google Wave and AdWords 3.0."
"We use Google Web Toolkit for all our Java-based internal apps", said Ben Fried, Google Chief Information Officer. "It’s a great tool for Enterprise-class Java GUI development, and we build our most sensitive and critical corporate systems with it. In addition to the big benefits in developer productivity GWT offers, the future-proofing and browser independence you get out of the box mean that we’re protected from the problems caused by browser-specific bugs and exploits."
Because GWT is developed as an open source project, many companies have already started taking advantage of the new features we’re premiering today. Google has worked in coordination with MediaBeacon™, DotSpots™, Red Hat™, InterContinental Hotel Group™, and many more.
“It is great to see a toolkit that provides developers with a way for creating rich internet applications without a lot of the traditional overhead. GWT provides nicely greased rails for us to develop interactive sites, which translates to an enhanced guest experience.”
Keith Credendino, in reference to the development of HolidayInn.com
Director, Distribution & Guest Technology
InterContinental Hotels Group
"DotSpots saw major code size improvements after the release of GWT 2.0. We shaved 20% off the code size by recompiling and even more once we started using Code Splitting. The new development mode available in GWT 2.0 has revolutionized the way we work with GWT. In previous versions, our development environments were limited to a single browser on our machine. We can now debug any browser running on the current machine, as well as browsers running on other platforms in virtual machines."
Matt Mastracci
Chief Technology Officer
DotSpots
"As part of the upstream for JBoss Enterprise BRMS we have included a project called Drools Guvnor which uses GWT-based GUIs, editors, and tools to aid in the management of large numbers of rules and provides a centralized repository for Drools Knowledge Bases. Guvnor has been based on GWT since GWT first came out."
Rich Sharples
Director, Product Management
Red Hat
To learn more about Google Web Toolkit, and to watch the video of last night’s Campfire One announcement, visit code.google.com/gwt. Additionally, the Google Web Toolkit team will be at the Google I/O conference in May (code.google.com/events/io).
About Google Inc.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
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