Best GWT widget library?

Question

Question for all the GWT gurus out there - which is the best GWT widgets library out there? And why?

List based on the answers:

• Default
• EXT-GWT
• GWT Components Library
• GWT-EXT
• GWT Widget Library
• GWTiger
• Rocket GWT
• Dojo
• SmartGWT
• Vaadin
• Others

Answer 1

SmartGWT is a good library and it has a lot of examples but the user interface is not that sleek. For user interface Ext GWT is good.

Answer 2

Google's default library is the most powerful library.

Ext GWT adds bells and whistles but apart from that it's similar to Google's.

Answer 3

GWT alone is a pretty good library.

I didn't use all of the mentioned ones but can recommend Ext GWT.

Answer 4

Depends on what you mean by "best". Best looking? Best API? Best for extending to your own custom needs?

E.g., I was just evaluating table classes to use in our application. We've been using GWT-Ext, but it has many performance problems for us, and is very hard to get the tables sized the way we need them. I came very close to going with GWT-Mosaic, but decided instead to build off the widgets in the GWT Incubator.

So, why did I make this choice? It seems that too many of the libraries out there come with their own, for lack of a better word, baggage. Either you have to dive whole-hog into some MVC framework (which may not be entirely compatible with the rest of your code base), or you have to adopt someone's new fangled layout system, or you have to live with the fact that you cannot really debug the code (because its just JSNI wrappers).

Don't get me wrong, the GWT Incubator isn't perfect...the widgets there are in some amount of flux. In my case, this was the best choice, though. It gives me good (but definitely not perfect):

• API
• Extensibility
• Look and feel (well, this is kinda weak, but that's what CSS is for.)

So...the answer (for me) is a combination of:

• Stock GWT widgets (with lots of custom styling)
• GWT Incubator tables
• A few home-grown widgets

(I should add: the "baggage" I'm referring to isn't necessarily a bad thing. But, if you just want a widget or two, it can raise the bar on what it takes to just get your work done and how good youe application looks.)

Answer 5

I prefer vanilla GWT. Some of the other APIs look pretty and their showcases really show off the widgets, but I always find that the performance isn't the best....when I say performance I mean more like response time. I hate when an application feels sluggish.

Answer 6

I would say if you need only a few widgets then build your own. You might copy-paste some concepts from the libraries mentioned. But they all lack one or the other thing. I have played with most of them and abandoned every one.

Answer 7

Most of the libraries mentioned are not open source and even worse: are just wrappers on top of a JavaScript library. The power of GWT lies in the fact that the application works on different browsers (because of the code generation for the "big" browsers specifically). These JavaScript underlying libraries can cause lots of problems.

I agree with jgindin GWT Incubator and GWT Mosaic are the best so far.

Answer 8

We're currently liking the GWT Mosaic widgets. We've worked with ext-JS and we've rolled our own widgets in the past. ext-JS licensing and bulk were a problem for us. Rolling our own isn't what we want to do. Mosaic gives us a happy middle ground which we like to think will be an even happier middle ground as the project matures.

Answer 9

One thing to be aware of is that from the forums GWT-Ext looks like it will no longer be developed/maintained much (maybe not at all?). On their website they recommend migrating to SmartGWT.

Answer 10

Comparison of the two EXTs here with pros and cons.

Answer 11

We have built a large HR portal and a couple of smaller applications using GWT Portlets. The focus of the project is not so much on building a collection of widgets but on creating a simple programming model.

From the website:

GWT Portlets is a free open source web framework for building GWT (Google Web Toolkit) applications. It defines a very simple & productive, yet powerful programming model to build good looking, modular GWT applications.

The programming model is somewhat similar to writing JSR168 portlets for a portal server (Liferay, JBoss Portal etc.). The "portal" is your application built using the GWT Portlets framework as a library. Application functionality is developed as loosely coupled Portlets each with an optional server side DataProvider.

Answer 12

Not saying it's "the best", but I've been using GWT-Ext at work lately. It's got some pros and cons:

Pros:

• Relatively easy to setup and use
• Decent sized community behind it
• LOTS of examples online, all of which have accompanying code
• Good selection of widgets that cover a wide range of functionality

Cons:

• Makes assumptions about your data's format and structure that you may not be able to accommodate
• Library is just a JSNI wrapper, which makes it harder to debug and extend
• Future support and development on the library is uncertain
• Some annoying cross-browser issues still exist (especially with layouts)
• Search function on their forums is essentially useless. (This is becoming a big pet peeve of mine >_<)

Answer 13

Didn't see this one mentioned, Vaadin (previously known is IT Mill Toolkit), but maybe that's because it's not technically exactly GWT; as their FAQ says:

How does this differ from GWT?

GWT applications run in the browser, while Vaadin applications run on the server. We do actually use GWT as a "rendering engine" on the browser side, so you can combine Vaadin and GWT.

Answer 14

smartGWT is slow and examples are lacking and it is very hard to find answers for even the basic questions, i.e. see all my non answered questions on this forum. I'm dumping smartgwt.

Answer 15

I am using GWT for a year. After lots of research, I have decided GWT Mosaic as a widget library.. Mosaic uses some of the GWT incubator components such as PagingScrollTable.. But the features of the combobox and table are not sufficient for us.. That is why, we have extended these components to add needed functionality.

Answer 16

I think SmartGWT is fine if you just whant to use the Widgets as they are, but if you would like to extend or modify the widgets as I do in the Gxt Scheduler I think that Ext-GWT is a better choice.

Answer 17

My experience shows that there are always many problems with 3rd party libraries. The best way - is to use well-known and well-maked technology itself plus your own components. It may take a longer time to write and maintain them, but TCO is always at lower level.

3rd party libraries often can break your plans unexpectedly. And it's hard to find and fix the source of problem.

So I'd suggest to use plain GWT.

Answer 18

for me EXT-GWT (aka GXT) is the best library currently available,I use it in 6 months project,and it helps a lot with many predefined components like grids,trees.... It's beautiful as well

Answer 19

Do not bind yourself to ANY of these libraries. Use Vanilla GWT to create the structure of your project. In particular, use the MVP pattern and an Event Bus. Please, see google article to know how to best design your client application with GWT: http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/articles/mvp-architecture.html

After, you can use any widget of these libraries (say a table, or a combobox, a datepicket, etc) and incorporate it to your project. Try to use extended components ONLY if you don't see a way to do it with vanilla GWT. This way you don't tie yourself to these libraries which are ALWAYS a pain when you try to do something that doesn't appear in the demo application, contain many bugs and their support are poor at best.

How to look for widgets should follow this order:

• First check GWT Incubator to see if there's what I'm looking for. http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit-incubator/
• Then, if you are looking for something "cooler" check GWT Mosaic http://code.google.com/p/gwt-mosaic/

Careful with other libraries, I've worked with them (and still have nightmares).

Answer 20

gwt-mosaic's user group doesn't seem very active and I couldn't find a user's manual besides the wiki snippets. gwt-mosaic introduced me to two interesting tools.

1) gwt-mosaic includes a wrapper for Tibco's PageBus which is a publish/subscribe tool for the JS parts of your app (RPC handlers, widget callbacks, widget setters). This is an alternative to gwt's event bus.

2) gwt-mosaic encourages the use of Beans Binding (http://code.google.com/p/gwt-beans-binding/) for binding data to widgets and validating widgets.

smartgwt isn't cheap for the full feature set and support. The jar is too large for appengine unless you remove the theme files you don't use. They invest engineering on the server side too.

I've heard ext-gwt is sluggish and the JS files are large.

The gwt widget incubator looks deprecated. I believe the deluxe grid will be released with the new gwt.

The lack of look-and-feel, binding, and validation standards is hampering the interoperability of widget libraries.

Answer 21

Do NOT use any of them! If you plan to develop a large scale application, you should consider using MVP pattern. The best implementation around is MVP4G framework, it supports GWT code splitting out of box. There are a lot of great examples, you can start with. The most valuable one is Mvp4GModules.