gwt vs ZK

[Trenton D. Adams]

Hi guys,

Can anyone think of a good reason to use GWT over ZK? ZK looks pretty
amazing, I must say.

http://www.zkoss.org/
http://www.zkoss.org/zkdemo/userguide/

[mumuri]

gwt is a client side framework, and zkoss a server side. If you don't
want to have to much load on your server, i think it's better to use
gwt. But it's true that zkoss is a good framework, which allow you to
developp mobile applications contrary to gwt.

Nevertheless, do you know one website who is using Zkoss ?

[Trenton D. Adams]

zkoss is a server side and client side framework.  It's extremely flexible.  You can configure each form element to send events immediately, or during form submission.  So, server load is not an issue.  Also, the overhead for a simple app ends up being 23K.  Very nice.

No, I'm not aware of anyone using zkoss.  They may have links on their site, to businesses using zkoss though.  I know that they used it to write an entire accounting system on the web.  That's why they originally developed zk.

[mP]

ZKoss whilst the work they have done is great and it all works the
solution is not as elegant as it could be. GWT takes a better approach
separating your userinterface and having it run on the client, withj
your server becoming a true server holding services. Also the manner
that ZK applications are developed (XML with embedded code etc) is nto
as natural as the pure java environment of GWT. Take a quick look at
the source and you will see that its not as readily understand as that
of a GWT application.

[Trenton D. Adams]

Really? That hasn't been my experience so far. It's extremely easy to
use, allows embedding and mixing of zul with XHTML and JSP.

Also, what you say about it not being as natural as the pure java
environment is not true, as it supports doing EVERYTHING in Java, if you
so desire. Example snippet below. The following java code snippet is
an alternative to writing the page in a ZUL XML file.

public class TestRichlet extends org.zkoss.zk.ui.GenericRichlet {
public void service(Page page) {
page.setTitle("Richlet Test");
final Window w = new Window("Richlet Test", "normal", false);
new Label("Hello World!").setParent(w);
final Label l = new Label();
l.setParent(w);
//...
w.setPage(page);
}
}

It's just such an elegant framework that it's mind blowing. It's the
most flexible thing I've seen yet, for AJAXy applications. Write your
code in Java, write it in ZUML, write it in XHTML mixed with ZUML. The
choice is entirely up to the individual.

Unfortunately, I was wrong, it's a 167K hit, as opposed to the 23K I
quoted before. Apparently the firefox status bar plugin I downloaded
lied to me.