GWT 1.5 Milestone 2 now available for download

[Bruce Johnson]

Hi again everybody,

GWT 1.5 Milestone 2 (build 0.0.2415) is now available:

http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/downloads/list?can=4&q=version:1.5

If you haven't already, please take a look at the notes for Milestone 1 (linked below) for some background information on changes coming in GWT 1.5:

http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit/browse_thread/thread/a29d3cad41851250

It bears repeating that for milestone builds like this, there are still many known problems, and it is use-at-your-own-risk. It *definitely* isn't ready for production use. For example, this milestone build is missing release notes, and it doesn't include the developer guide documentation. Please expect that it will require some trial and error getting everything to work.

What's new in Milestone 2? Here are some highlights:

- There is a new DOM API package. Using the new ability to subclass JavaScriptObject, GWT 1.5 M2 includes bindings for nearly the entire W3C HTML DOM spec. See the javadoc for the package com.google.gwt.dom.client for details. The widgets will be retrofitted to use the new DOM classes in the upcoming release candidate.

- Some widgets now have animation effects. Popups, trees, etc. have subtle animation effects to provide visual cues when hidden and shown.

- The addition of a "Showcase" sample. This sample combines features from several other samples and demonstrates the new, nicer-looking GWT default stylesheet and widget animations. Note that the default style is still in flux and is likely to change.

- Keyboard support has been added where previously absent in UI classes, including in menus and tab panels.

- ARIA support for enhanced accessibility is now present in most widgets, including menus, trees, tabs, and button variants.

- Bi-di. Widgets and panels have built-in support for bi-directional layout.

- "long" emulation. The Java language defines "long" types to be 64-bit signed integers, whereas JavaScript only supports 64-bit floating point numbers, which cannot accurately represent the same whole-number range as a true "long" type. GWT 1.5 M2 transparently emulates long types properly to more faithfully maintain Java semantics in web mode.

- There is a single Mac OS X distribution that works on both Leopard (10.5) and Tiger (10.4).

Now, some known bugs and caveats:

- Change from Milestone 1: No more "std/" directory in the compiler output. The GWT compiler output directory structure has been reverted to match its behavior in GWT 1.4. If auxiliary linker output is generated, additional files are placed in a sibling subdirectory whose name is "<module>-aux/". In most existing projects, this output directory won't be created, so the behavior should match GWT 1.4.

- The DOM structure for some widgets has changed to accommodate new CSS styling options. See the CSS rules used in GWT-default.css and Showcase.css (both in the Showcase project) for examples of how to use the new styles.

- Not all widgets work perfectly in standards mode. There are several minor known layout bugs that still need to be fixed for the release candidate.

- "long" and JSNI. The new long emulation support adds a new prohibition against the accidental use of "long" types within JSNI code. If you experience this error, the hosted mode tree logger will provide a "More Info" link that you can double-click for details on how to resolve the issue.

We really hope you'll try it out, and we 're eager to see what you think so far. Please report bugs in the issue tracker<http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/entry>, and discuss it in the contributors forum<http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit-Contributors>.

Enjoy!

-- Bruce, on behalf of the GWT team

--
Join us at Google's biggest developer event of the year
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[David Clément]

Since M2, UIObject.getStyleElement is final. Is it done on purpose?

But since this method will always return getElement, is it still usefull?

At least, the JavaDoc should change ;-):

/**
* Template method that returns the element to which style names will be
* applied. By default it returns the root element, but this method may be
* overridden to apply styles to a child element.
*
* @return the element to which style names will be applied
*/
protected final com.google.gwt.user.client.Element getStyleElement() {
return getElement();
}

[Joel Webber]

Whoops, that's a straight-up mistake on my part that no one (me included) caught during review. I've entered issue 2255 to deal with this for the RC.

[GeekyCoder]

Hi Bruce and Joel, the creators of GWT,

I have to say I enjoy GWT way of development. However over time as the
web application grow in size, the compilation and time to run the web
application becomes painfully slow. I believe that this will improve
over time but I could see that no matter how much it improves, these
area will still prove challenging to tackle.
May I propose another solution that at least help to curb this during
development time through using more pragmatic and realistic approach.
The solution is to include main method in class that GWT will compile
and run rather than only those using EntryPoint interface.

I have written a full article concerning the motivation and
implementation of this method.
Please do take a look and I hope that similar solution will forth
pending...

http://geekycoder.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/improving-the-development-experience-of-google-web-toolkit/#more-3638

thank for your attention....
<:^}

On Apr 8, 11:21 am, "Bruce Johnson" <br...@google.com> wrote:
> Hi again everybody,
> GWT 1.5 Milestone 2 (build 0.0.2415) is now available:
>

> http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/downloads/list?can=4&q=ve...

>
> If you haven't already, please take a look at the notes for Milestone 1
> (linked below) for some background information on changes coming in GWT 1.5:
>

> http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit/browse_thread/threa...

[David Clément]

I have a problem with long in this release.

The following code is working in hosted mode but not in JS in Firefox
(I haven't tested IE)

FF hangs and show the popup to stop the script.

It is working fine with an int.

David

public class test implements EntryPoint {

private static long id = 0;

/**
* This is the entry point method.
*/
public void onModuleLoad() {
final Button button = new Button("Click me");
final Label label = new Label();

button.addClickListener(new ClickListener() {

public void onClick(Widget sender) {
Window.alert(String.valueOf(id++));
}
});

/*
* Assume that the host HTML has elements defined whose IDs are
"slot1", "slot2". You must be careful to ensure
* that all IDs are unique if you use this approach.
*/
RootPanel.get("slot1").add(button);
RootPanel.get("slot2").add(label);
}
}

[Bruce Johnson]

Thanks for isolating the problem. We'll definitely look at it:

http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=2314

[Scott Blum]

Thanks, fixed in r2495.