Has anyone used “GWT Designer”?

Question

Haven't seen anything about it here but it seems to solve one of the problems with GWT - the fact that you have to write Java code to generate your GUI. Instead this software allows you to design the GUI using drag-and-drop tools - a WYSIWYG interface.

I'm not trying to sell the product, by the way.

I just want to know whether it works as advertised, is effective, easy to use, etc?

Anyone have any experience to answer these questions?

Answer 1

I don't think that the lack of a GUI editor is a problem with GWT. Consider HTML, there are plenty of WYSIWYG editors for that (like Dreamweaver) but most experienced web designers don't touch that stuff with a barge pole, they hand code it. Not because they're masochists, but because they want control over the source, they want to make it clean and readable. Coding is a scientific artwork, best left to Human Beings ;)

I tried GWT Designer very early on, and I found that it was fairly poor (and only worked on Windows because it had some dlls that went along with it), but things may have changed drastically since then.

Answer 2

GWT-Designer is now freely available as the product has been acquired by Google. http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-relaunches-instantiations.html Google will improve the product which is already quite good.

Answer 3

I'm using GWT Designer for my Capstone project. I did start from scratch, and it worked quite well. I'm no fan of WYSIWYG software, so I was pleasantly surprised. Here's a link to a post I did on it:

http://benarchie.blogspot.com/2010/12/gwt-designer.html

Answer 4

GWT-Designer is getting better all the time. Give it another look some time, it's catching up to things like visual studio in my opinion.

Answer 5

Personally I like GWT Designer for Eclipse and it is free.

It is a rapid development tool. Not a solution for non-programmers however it will accelerate a Java coders ability to learn how to use the GWT API. Once you learn the tool it will reduce coding time.

I found it necessary to frequently switch between code and WYSIWYG editor to get things exactly how I wanted them. The two editors work well together. You will still need to refer to Java Docs to gain a full understanding. Most of the Java Docs have excellent Java and UiBinder code examples in them which are ready to cut and paste.

Creating GUIs in UiBinder is definitely the way to go because it simplifies the hierarchical nature of laying out GUI elements. The API is missing some information about how to hand code in UiBinder however between GWT-Designer, Java Docs and Google, you will find an answer.

The built in Jetty web server also simplifies deploying and testing on your local machine. I was able to make small code changes and see the effect in the web browser immediately.

Try these tutorials.

http://code.google.com/eclipse/docs/gwt_uibinder.html

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/tools/gwtdesigner/tutorials/stockwatcher.html

Answer 6

I've tried GWT Designer recently. It still looks poor. If you don't want to lose flexibility, I would recommend to use GWTLab

Answer 7

Just tried it then. Most of my ui.xml files wouldn't open because it doesn't currently support @UiField(provided=true).

The ui.xml files that didn't use this feature would often crash with things like UnableToCompleteException.

Maybe if you started from scratch using designer you might have more luck.

Answer 8

I had a year's subscription but did not renew it, being a bit disappointed with the product.

1) The designer injects all Java code adding creation/property setting/event handling to the module you are building in a most unecomic way. Additionally, it is pretty difficult to modularize the application. Compared to Flex, for instance, the number of lines of code gets easily double or triple in a module and seeing the forest from the trees is not easy.

2) Web applications I built only a a couple of years ago CEASED WORKING possibly due to changes in Javascript engines. That was something I did not expect and is very possibly GWT's fault.

3) The GUI designer needs A LOT of CPU power and so does the build phase.

The concept is nice, however, I admit and GWT designer is the only of its kind. The feeling of difficulty in modularizing may well be my lazyness.

EDIT: Shortly after I wrote the above comment Instantiations/Google introduced the UiBinder concept which makes a lot more sense than the original amalgamation. Now it is a lot more professional.