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by jonmc12 6026 days ago
GWT always sounds interesting, but I am underwhelmed by the application gallery. Every app looks like a draft version of gmail, google maps or google wave. Any links to impressive interfaces (non google-built)?
6 comments

MediaBeacon showed off a really cool GWT-based product at Campfire. They've built the equivalent of a desktop application inside the browser (full drag-and-drop, file management, etc). The video is up on their website: http://mediabeacon.com/

I'll also plug our GWT-based product, DotSpots. I'm dogfooding it on my blog at http://grack.com - just select one of the paragraphs or click one of the blue dots to see the UI. It's an example of a non-traditional GWT application: we're running our own GWT code inside of a foreign website. Our website is more of classic GWT application, but we compile both of those targets (as well as Chrome and Firefox extensions) from subsets of the same codebase.

We build TeamPostgreSQL with GWT. It is a PostgreSQL web administration package. Feel free to to take a look:

http://www.teampostgresql.com

The download package comes with a bundled sample database, so you can take it for a spin too. Feedback welcome.

I have some feedback:

- I was totally confused how to launch this - I couldn't discern any benefit of this over phpPgAdmin minus the nicely done interface - I couldn't discern any benefit of this over Aqua Data Studio, NaviCat, et al. sans pricing.

I'm really curious why you chose to do this as a web app. If the benefit is to give "managers" and others access to the database to run reporting, where is the graphing, pivot table, etc support? If it's to give other developers access, your desktop counterparts (specifically Aqua Data Studio) provide tools you are lacking (code completion, diagramming). Granted there is a sizable price difference, which could be a selling point, but again phpPgAdmin does all that you do and is free and extensible because it's OSS.

The screenshots are too few and show too little. I get the impression of a very simple "me too" app that can do very little and provides no benefit over the cmd line. At least a screenshot for every bullet point in the details, and show how you handle corner cases such as columns with 10K text.

Ditto jawngee suggestion about creating "end user" pages with standard reports (e.g. graphs using http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeplot/). Allow me to let users view them without logging in. That is what cmd line can't do.

Thanks for the feedback, it is valuable. I will make sure we take a long hard look at the points you mentioned.

The product is still a few features away from being ready for the public launch, the value proposition should be more apparent when we get there.

I would say speed tracer, but that is google-built.
I suggest looking at the EXT-GWT library for what is possible. I'm using it in a project where its GPLness doesn't matter.
It depends on your needs.

If you don't want to modify the widget appearances or behaviors, Ext-GWT is nice.

If you aren't building a large web-app, Ext-GWT is the way to go.

But if you're one of them people who prefer to do TDD, or unit-test etc, avoid Ext-GWT at all cost.

If you want to personalize your app, avoid Ext-GWT at all cost.

If you want a solid (library) Java code, avoid Ext-GWT at all cost.

I've been using their code since MyGWT 0.4 and right now we're trying to get rid of it so bad.

I was also using it since mygwt. But they did a "bait and switch" when they moved to ext; I lost months of work.
blueprint by lombardi is pretty good

https://blueprint.lombardi.com/

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