GUI Platform choice: Google GWT, SmartGWT, ExtGWT and SmartClient

Question

We are in the process choosing a new GUI platform. Ive been looking at subj. but are a bit confused. Could someone please refer to at tutorial or blog that makes a qualified comparison.

Thanks. Nikolaj G.

Answer 1

We've used SmartGWT for a couple of projects and it's ok but there are tradeoffs:

PRO:

• Makes it easy to write a web app that looks and works like a rich client GUI.
• Don't have to know any Javascript. SmartGWT coding is pretty similar to Swing coding, which is good if you already know how to do that.

CON:

• Unless you do a lot of work tinkering with the look and feel, your app won't look very web-like, it will look like a rich client app running in a browser. You may not care about this.
• It's a pretty heavyweight library which has to download large .js files to get going.
• We found it difficult to control the layout of form controls precisely, but that might just be our inexperience.

Answer 2

I think you should fully understand what GWT does and what your projects needs are first and foremost. There wont be a source that will adequately compare them for your specific needs.

Start with the wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Toolkit

Here is a comparison of SmartGWT vs GWT

http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=60186

Answer 3

If interested in AJAX RIA Frameworts, below analysis is for you

Before starting new GUI for our new project arrival, I made some research.

Here are my findings (remove spaces from "http: // "; bcoz stackoverflow is preventing me to do so :)): Prototype framework favorable links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ajax_frameworks

http://www.javabeat.net/articles/12-comparison-of-ajax-frameworks-prototype-gwt-dwr-and-1.html

http://www.devx.com/AJAXRoundup/Article/33209

Dojo framework favorable links:

http://blog.creonfx.com/javascript/dojo-vs-jquery-vs-mootools-vs-prototype-performance-comparison

jQuery framework favorable links:

http://blog.creonfx.com/javascript/mootools-vs-jquery-vs-prototype-vs-yui-vs-dojo-comparison-revised

Test speed of different RIA frameworks:

http://mootools.net/slickspeed/#

More comparasions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_JavaScript_frameworks

http://jqueryvsmootools.com/#conclusion

Out of all these findings I started using SmartClient 5. Initially we faced some issues but as SmartClient matures I find it interesting in many terms: 1. APIs doc help and examples 2. Flexible controls 3. Forum

Today I am working on SmartClient 8 and few on my GUIs are in production running successfully. Actually the great help with SmartClient is that you find every thing at one place. No need to dug many other sites that is hard to do for any other open source RIA framework.

So my choice is no doubt SmartClient.

Thanks Shailendra (shaILU)