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.
Thanks for posting these milestones for testing, especially the
Java1.5 support is well appreciated!
Not really issues, but from M1 to M2 for my project:
- The compiler (and shell) now runs out of heap space with the Java
default, during rebind to particular browsers
- The size of the browser-specific cache files has jumped 15%, from
~185k to ~210k. There was little change from 1.4.60 to M1
I just switched our project over. Initial impressions are very good.
Nice work with integrating animation into it as well. I like the new
showcase example as well, but I wonder if the stack panel wouldn't
work better as a slide than that weird fade thing it does?
Output files are about the same size as Milestone 1, however compile
time has increased a bit. Our project which used to take about 45
seconds to build now takes 1m20. Not sure if that's specifically
something to do with our project or whether it will be a general
thing? I'm sure you've crammed all sorts of goodness into it, but
anything you can do to tune that compile time would be awesome!
overall very good!
Rusty
On Apr 8, 12:28 pm, "Ian Bambury" <ianbamb...@gmail.com> wrote:
Just one other thing I noticed, it also breaks the LightBox widget
from gwt-widgets, which is one I rely on fairly heavily. Basically
only about half of the screen is greyed out by the PNG image they use.
I might have to look into that one a bit more, as it was working fine
under M1.
Rusty
On Apr 8, 2:32 pm, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just switched our project over. Initial impressions are very good.
> Nice work with integrating animation into it as well. I like the new
> showcase example as well, but I wonder if the stack panel wouldn't
> work better as a slide than that weird fade thing it does?
> Output files are about the same size as Milestone 1, however compile
> time has increased a bit. Our project which used to take about 45
> seconds to build now takes 1m20. Not sure if that's specifically
> something to do with our project or whether it will be a general
> thing? I'm sure you've crammed all sorts of goodness into it, but
> anything you can do to tune that compile time would be awesome!
> overall very good!
> Rusty
> On Apr 8, 12:28 pm, "Ian Bambury" <ianbamb...@gmail.com> wrote:
Sorry for the triple post but it seems to be related to GWT not
stretching the background popup panel past 640 wide? The height gets
stretched fine but the width stops after 640.
Any ideas? It's just a simple call to PopupPanel.setSize(width,
height)?
So you call PopupPanel.setSize(900, 600) and you get a PopupPanel that
is a 640x900?
On Apr 8, 3:12 pm, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just one other thing I noticed, it also breaks the LightBox widget
> from gwt-widgets, which is one I rely on fairly heavily. Basically
> only about half of the screen is greyed out by the PNG image they use.
> I might have to look into that one a bit more, as it was working fine
> under M1.
> Rusty
> On Apr 8, 2:32 pm, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Excellent work, go GWT team!
> > I just switched our project over. Initial impressions are very good.
> > Nice work with integrating animation into it as well. I like the new
> > showcase example as well, but I wonder if the stack panel wouldn't
> > work better as a slide than that weird fade thing it does?
> > Output files are about the same size as Milestone 1, however compile
> > time has increased a bit. Our project which used to take about 45
> > seconds to build now takes 1m20. Not sure if that's specifically
> > something to do with our project or whether it will be a general
> > thing? I'm sure you've crammed all sorts of goodness into it, but
> > anything you can do to tune that compile time would be awesome!
> Sorry for the triple post but it seems to be related to GWT not
> stretching the background popup panel past 640 wide? The height gets
> stretched fine but the width stops after 640.
> Any ideas? It's just a simple call to PopupPanel.setSize(width,
> height)?
> So you call PopupPanel.setSize(900, 600) and you get a PopupPanel that
> is a 640x900?
> On Apr 8, 3:12 pm, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just one other thing I noticed, it also breaks the LightBox widget
> > from gwt-widgets, which is one I rely on fairly heavily. Basically
> > only about half of the screen is greyed out by the PNG image they use.
> > I might have to look into that one a bit more, as it was working fine
> > under M1.
> > Rusty
> > On Apr 8, 2:32 pm, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Excellent work, go GWT team!
> > > I just switched our project over. Initial impressions are very good.
> > > Nice work with integrating animation into it as well. I like the new
> > > showcase example as well, but I wonder if the stack panel wouldn't
> > > work better as a slide than that weird fade thing it does?
> > > Output files are about the same size as Milestone 1, however compile
> > > time has increased a bit. Our project which used to take about 45
> > > seconds to build now takes 1m20. Not sure if that's specifically
> > > something to do with our project or whether it will be a general
> > > thing? I'm sure you've crammed all sorts of goodness into it, but
> > > anything you can do to tune that compile time would be awesome!
Rusty, I can think of no good reason that a popup would be limited in size like that. One possibility is that it might be related to standards vs. quirks fixes, but that's just a guess. I'm checkout out gwt-widgets right now to see what's going on.
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 3:17 AM, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry for the triple post but it seems to be related to GWT not > stretching the background popup panel past 640 wide? The height gets > stretched fine but the width stops after 640.
> Any ideas? It's just a simple call to PopupPanel.setSize(width, > height)?
> So you call PopupPanel.setSize(900, 600) and you get a PopupPanel that > is a 640x900?
> On Apr 8, 3:12 pm, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Just one other thing I noticed, it also breaks the LightBox widget > > from gwt-widgets, which is one I rely on fairly heavily. Basically > > only about half of the screen is greyed out by the PNG image they use. > > I might have to look into that one a bit more, as it was working fine > > under M1.
> > Rusty
> > On Apr 8, 2:32 pm, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Excellent work, go GWT team!
> > > I just switched our project over. Initial impressions are very good. > > > Nice work with integrating animation into it as well. I like the new > > > showcase example as well, but I wonder if the stack panel wouldn't > > > work better as a slide than that weird fade thing it does?
> > > Output files are about the same size as Milestone 1, however compile > > > time has increased a bit. Our project which used to take about 45 > > > seconds to build now takes 1m20. Not sure if that's specifically > > > something to do with our project or whether it will be a general > > > thing? I'm sure you've crammed all sorts of goodness into it, but > > > anything you can do to tune that compile time would be awesome!
I just checked out the gwt-widget source, and set up a quick sample app that looks like this (not sure if this is the intended use pattern, but it looked like it):
PopupPanel pp = new PopupPanel();
pp.add(new Button("w00t!"));
LightBox lb = new LightBox(pp);
lb.show();
This seems to do more or less the right thing on IE6, FF3, and Safari3, and Opera9. The gray area overflowed the client boundaries a little bit on IE and Safari, but that was about it. Could you show me an example that is pegging the popup size?
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 8:24 AM, Joel Webber <j...@google.com> wrote: > Rusty, > I can think of no good reason that a popup would be limited in size like > that. One possibility is that it might be related to standards vs. quirks > fixes, but that's just a guess. I'm checkout out gwt-widgets right now to > see what's going on.
> Thanks for the heads-up, > joel.
> On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 3:17 AM, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sorry for the triple post but it seems to be related to GWT not > > stretching the background popup panel past 640 wide? The height gets > > stretched fine but the width stops after 640.
> > Any ideas? It's just a simple call to PopupPanel.setSize(width, > > height)?
> > So you call PopupPanel.setSize(900, 600) and you get a PopupPanel that > > is a 640x900?
> > On Apr 8, 3:12 pm, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Just one other thing I noticed, it also breaks the LightBox widget > > > from gwt-widgets, which is one I rely on fairly heavily. Basically > > > only about half of the screen is greyed out by the PNG image they use. > > > I might have to look into that one a bit more, as it was working fine > > > under M1.
> > > > I just switched our project over. Initial impressions are very good. > > > > Nice work with integrating animation into it as well. I like the new > > > > showcase example as well, but I wonder if the stack panel wouldn't > > > > work better as a slide than that weird fade thing it does?
> > > > Output files are about the same size as Milestone 1, however compile > > > > time has increased a bit. Our project which used to take about 45 > > > > seconds to build now takes 1m20. Not sure if that's specifically > > > > something to do with our project or whether it will be a general > > > > thing? I'm sure you've crammed all sorts of goodness into it, but > > > > anything you can do to tune that compile time would be awesome!
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 1:32 AM, rusty <rustysh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Excellent work, go GWT team!
> Output files are about the same size as Milestone 1, however compile > time has increased a bit. Our project which used to take about 45 > seconds to build now takes 1m20. Not sure if that's specifically > something to do with our project or whether it will be a general > thing? I'm sure you've crammed all sorts of goodness into it, but > anything you can do to tune that compile time would be awesome!
Rusty (and others),
Can you ensure that you're not getting a lot of warnings output to the console, for example, about deprecated metadata usage like gwt.typeArgs? We've seen several other people encounter slowness due to large amounts of logging. For example, running with -logLevel DEBUG can have a huge impact on the amount of time it takes to compile, launch hosted mode, and refresh.
