Hey all,
I would like to post this as an appreciation message how glad I am GWT exists, and want to give props to the maintainers.
I've first started GWT somewhere around 2007 when I joined a company that was developing an application using GWT.
Initially I liked that GWT made it possible to write the frontend in Java. Any integration issues between frontend and backend basically disappeared.
Everything was awesome until we had a code review on the generated html/css on the frontend by a frontend specialist.
We got destroying on that review because we had a div explosion and the html was non-functional, so not a good scenario for screenreaders (for blind people).
So we hired that same specialist to setup the html structure with accompanying css for the frontend. We then built GWT components to generate that exact same structure, and used his css.
That turned out to be a very practical marriage.
The integration between ui and backend was still 100% java, we had compile time validation in the IDE and in the build, and we were perfectly in line with UI specs with a very functional html structure. Plus we could make components do whatever we want.
At one point we've made a network drawing tool with html5Canvas, all fully developed with GWT. We had persons and entities draw themselves on a canvas. And we've made animated dashboard widgets that way too. Fun part was that the business could copy paste the widgets into their reports, as it were images.
Anyway I've been working this way ever since, with resident (or hired) html specialists and designers designing the frontend structure, which we would then develop to be able to generate the same from GWT. So far I know of no other framework that provides this functionality. And if there is, I doubt integration with Java is this simple.
Simplicity is a good way to achieve stability & predictability - so I'm a happy person!
Thanks GWT & Maintainers!
Rg,
Leon..