Google has launched a
beta of its Google
Web Toolkit, promising to make it dramatically easier for developers to
create Ajax applications.
"Ajax is really hard," Bruce Johnson, a lead programmer working on the
project, said in a session at the
JavaOne conference
where the toolkit was officially unveiled.
"If you have tried it you will already know this. Download Google Web Toolkit
and you will never have to worry about it," he joked.
Ajax allows developers to create online applications that pre-fetch data for
increased interactivity and usability while cutting back on the number of pages
that a user has to visit.
Examples of Ajax applications include
Google Maps,
Gmail and
Flickr.
Current tools for creating Java applications require developers to manually
enter JavaScript code, which makes for an error prone process, Johnson argued.
The Google application translates Java code into JavaScript, allowing
developers to use existing development tools such as
Eclipse or
JProfiler.
"You don't have to become a JavaScript guru. You can spend more time on your
application and less on this junk," said Johnson.
The application is available free of charge and currently supports Windows
and Linux. It has been released under the
Apache
2.0 open source licence.
The tool is in beta for now. Google did not provide a projected launch date,
but promised to post frequent updates.
Developers that attended Google's presentation at the JavaOne conference
responded enthusiastically.
"Every JavaOne that I come to, there is one talk that makes the conference
worth going to. This is that talk," one delegate said during a question and
answer session after Google's presentation.
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