GWT is the Tech that Makes Clarity Accounting Tick
Last Thursday at Launch Party 5 one of the things surprised people was my use of the Google Web Toolkit (usually abbreviated as GWT) to develop the application. Since GWT is so new, there are relatively few publically viewable application that use it, and of those, few are as attractive as Clarity Accounting.
Enter Income
Why GWT?
I originally chose Google Web Toolkit for a few reasons:
- I wanted the application to “feel” like a desktop application, especially it should be fast like a desktop application. Since GWT is designed for AJAX & DHTML coding, it met this requirement perfectly
- I know I would develop the server side in Java for its security, scalability, and code maintainability. Since GWT allows me to also write the client-side code in Java and, in fact, share some code between client and server, I thought it would save me some work there
- The first time I tried to get it working, it worked without a lot of pain and confusion; the results of my code are usually quite predictable
- I knew I wanted to provide an API, and since GWT “talks” to the server using an API already, I knew that by providing another protocol to access the same API as my own user interface I would greatly simplify its development.
Entering Income
How did you create such a great UI in GWT?
After looking around at the “state of web technologies” I realized that in user interface building GWT has one shortcoming: the user interfaces are created using code. Writing code to create HTML layout and form elements was quite difficult and converting a nice web design into a GWT user interface would be quite a challenge. Most of the latest technologies out there using HTML templates which can be edited by a designer in Dreamweaver (or whatever their tool of choice is).
I decided to create my own XHTML templating system based on facelets. I liked facelets, but at the time the AJAX/DHTML support for facelets was not very good. The benefit of facelets is that someone who is good with XHTML/CSS can create the user interface without having to know or understand Java, and I can get some very cost-effective indian XHTML coders for a good price without exposing the main source code of the application to outsiders.
It’s likely that I’ll make the XHTML template-based generator and the widgets I’ve built open source one day, when I have time to clean up the code and write some documentation.
Closing Remarks
GWT was a great choice for this application and after adding my own XHTML templating system it became a killer toolkit for rich internet applications. I would recommend GWT for those planning to write DHTML rich internet applications of any kind.
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Tags: development, google web toolkit, GWT, Software Development, technology
