I just put up a new GWT demo inspired by Jonathan Coulton’s appearance on the podcast last week. I was going to write something up on how to use the library, but it is actually so simple to use, that there is really nothing new for me to explain. The only thing that was missing which I wanted to add, was a way to pause the songs. Currently the only options right now are play and stop.

The widgets I used are from the GWT-Ext widget library. Sanjiv has really done a nice job with the new 2.0 release.

Update: Thanks to Sanjiv for helping me fix the issue I had with IE.

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!

Over at developerlife, Nazmul Idris has posted a new tutorial titled, GWT Tutorial – Using History mechanism to create an RSS reader app.

This tutorial is meant to show you how to write an application that uses history. The Managing History and Hyperlinks tutorial gives you the background information you need, and shows you how to “think” about History when building your GWT app. This tutorial takes the next step and shows you a sample application that uses history to load an RSS feed. There are other ways to pass parameters to GWT apps that don’t involve using the History mechanism. However, the application in this tutorial will take this approach.

There are a bunch of useful techniques in this article, so check it out.