GWT Designer Contest #2
February 28th, 2008 - Written by in Contests
It’s time for another contest!
Recently, Instantiations released version 4.0 of their GWT Designer product. For those who don’t know, GWT Designer is an Eclipse based GUI creation tool for the Google Web Toolkit. It supports such snazzy features as drag-and-drop GUI building, bi-directional code generation, and several useful Wizards that help make GWT development easier. This latest version includes some exciting new features including basic integration with the MyGWT and GWT-Ext widget libraries.
For this contest, I have three, one-year subscriptions (a $39 value) of GWT Designer to give away. If you are already an existing GWT Designer subscriber, you will be able to get your subscription renewed for an extra year if you win.
How to Enter
You can gain entries into the contest in three ways.
1) . Existing email subscribers are automatically entered into this and every other future contest! (1 entry)
2) Leave a comment to this post, letting us know something about GWT that you’d like to see added or improved. (2 entries)
3) Download a copy of GWT Designer (if you don’t have it already) and leave a comment on this post, telling us your impressions of the product (good or bad). (2 entries)
If you perform all three tasks, you will give yourself 5 chances to win. Our first contest, had 50 contestants so your chances of winning are pretty good.
Deadline
Contest ends Monday, March 10th at Noon PST. The three winners will be picked by Random.org’s list randomizer. Please make sure to enter a valid email, or you won’t be able to win.
Thanks and good luck!
OK, I’m game….
My current wish list for GWT is that 1.5 is released and has a complete infrastructure for simulated reflection, so there is an “official” data-binding/validation framework.
I’ve used the SWT Designer for a long time and like that GWT Designer works much the same way. We like it on our team to get newer workers up to speed quicker on GWT and also that it maintains all the GWT-RPC nits that are required. I’m looking forward to hook in MyGWT and some of the other libraries and have it just work with GWT Designer. I also like that Eric Clayberg answers his emails directly
My foremost wish is for GWT 1.5 with support for generics (I hate all the dang casting I have to do now!).
After that, my main desire is to see hosted mode performance improvements. The edit/compile/debug (even with the ability to refresh & pick up new & modified code) just takes too long, making it more painful to try small tweaks.
I use Pulse (http://www.poweredbypulse.com) to manage my Eclipse profiles, and my foremost wish is to be able to download and install GWT Designer using this tool. I mean only GWT Designer, because it already is available, but as a part of Window Builder Pro plug-in.
I think it’s great that GWT Designer has now support for custom widget libraries. MyGwt and GWT-Ext are really great for writing “enterprise” applications.
One thing I don’t like about GWT Designer is how when I open the design view, the Properties and Palette are parts of it. I’d rather see those as separate views, so when I work in a dual display environment, I can move them to another display (like in Matisse4MyEclipse project for example).
As for GWT, I just can’t wait to see it’s Java 5 language syntax support. I think that having Generics will be pretty convenient, although I don’t see much use for Annotations, since GWT doesn’t support reflection. I understand why it isn’t supported, but I think it still would be pretty cool to have useful annotations
Cheers!
Adam
hi,
#1
GWT Designer:
- per-project configuration
- features not related to GWT Designer should not be displayed in configuration options, or in tools pallettes. I understand GWT Designer is based on WBPro, however I think that it is becoming truly separate tool based on number of post on users forum,
- panels in GWT Designer “design” window should be implemented in Eclipse modern implementation, so they could be part of current workspace, not part of GWT Designer desing panel window,
#2
GWT Toolkit:
- official 1.5. beta or RC release
- swappable browser in hosted mode
regards,
Peter
I used GWT-Designer mainly without the wysiwyg Editor. I would appreciate better i18n support. Keeping the interface and the text files in sync is tedious, we could need a helping hand here.
Since the shell gets very slow on bigger projects/ UIs, I started building more modules to temporarily overcoming the pain. Would be great if the GWT-Designer could provide a project template for modules. Modules package into jar’s and do not package as war’s. I haven’t seen the latest release, maybe it is already done.
Some way to provide custom web.xml configuration elements would be great too. GWT lacks support here.
brgds,
Papick
Hi all
I have been using GWT for about a year now, and i must say that its the easiest API i have come across for AJAX development. i also like the community, that GWT has.
As for GWT Designer.I can’t download it to give it a test drive because of my companies sucky downloading policies, but what i saw of the screenshots is the “Deployment” item on the context menu and the “CSS” editing window, those 2 items could save me a fair share of time. Also now that MyGWT is supported, i think buying GWT Designer is a must!!!
Good work
Cheers
Juan
I have to agree with most people here: I am looking forward to the generics support in 1.5.
I just tried out GWT Designer and I really enjoy the drag and drop interface designing and support for third party libraries.
FYI – GWT Designer works fine with GWT 1.5 for me. I am building from trunk…
G’day,
#1 GWT Toolkit: would like to see an “in browser” mode that somehow works without the hosted-mode two window pop-up. Support for generics and more Java API/features.
#2 GWT Designer: like the smooth Eclipse integration and support for standard eclipse (no J2EE stuff needed). Unsure if buying GWT design gave me Swing/SWT so those extra features were confusing.
Cheers,
Grant
Hi ppl,
#1 GWT Toolkit: Option to choose (and select default) window size of hosted mode and an option to redirect the logs to eclipse console
#2 GWT Designer: Support for GWT-Ext
well… really I’m newbie with GWT, but I want to improve my skills and become really a great developer
Hi!
1. Yeah, Generics. would be a really nice addition.
2. I love it, its really easy to develop UI’s compared to doing it just by code.
cheers
About 2. I will also like support for x64 Vista. It didnt install on my other PC :S.
I’d like to have a better support for integrate multiple
module for a single application.
I know that GWT doesn’t give that natively, but the chance
of use (and manage) multiple html files that point to the same application could be very useful.
Also the ability to create a multi-page application with a DeckPanel could be a nice feature.
Very useful is the support for GWT-Ext, I’ll download the new version and I’ll see more.
Simone
1,An easy Data-binding layer. to easy handle pages with tons of fields.
I would like GWT-designer for it makes tedious job of coding for the user interface pretty easy and it is a very important tool when I set for programming the final year graduating project.
Already, the google corp. has made AJAX web development easier by making that programmable in pure Java and this is a handy tool when it comes to Rapid development of web2.0 sites using AJAX.
very nice to read that it has extended its support to great libraries MYGWT and GWT-EXT.
I would like to give a try now.
I love it and love to use it, a lot.
I have only tasted the trial version of this tool.
ThanQ.
Would love to see an easy to use data binding layer to avoid complex mappings between the UI and DAO’s.
Def some things that would make me use GWT Designer exclusively.
1) Same as others, 1.5, generics, etc
2) Native understanding of the Hibernate package server side, and GWT serialization of the Hibernate objects themselves, potentially without relying on copy the data to a POJO. That’d be killer.
[...] you haven’t already, make sure to enter our GWT Designer contest. The contest ends this Monday, March 10 at Noon PST. We are currently at 96 entries in the contest [...]
My personal wishes (nothing new)
GWT:
(1) Generics, generics, generics
(2) Better debugging integration (restarting is a hassle and takes time)
(3) Speed (hosted mode)
GWT Designer:
(1) 100% Ext integration
Overall GWT just simply works, Ext support in GWT Designer is still new and not 100%, therefor haven’t been able to use it much.
Downloaded the new 4.0 release last night to check it out, haven’t looked at it since 2.0/3.0. GWT JUnit tests are definatly a NICE addition I wasn’t expecting. Gotten better over the revisions.
[...] finally the time to announce the winners of GWT Designer Contest #2. There were a total of 125 entries for the contest. Every email subscription got one entry and [...]
yeah this is a good designer to design the ajax and js based gui webapplications.