I need to see component tree of the GWT application. DOM tree will be also acceptable. Unfortunatelly GWT hosted browser does not provide access for devToolbar.
The only way I found is to compile to javascript and then use regular browser. But compilation takes enormous ammount of time.
ExtJS has Debug Console, but I was not able to find something similar for GXT.
Please suggest the way you debug visual GWT applications.
Normally one would use the IDE debugger to step through GWT code. but if the problem is a CSS/styling issue (which from the sound of the question, it seems to be), then that might not really help.
i guess compiling it and using firebug is the only tried and true way for css issues.
Why is compilation into (pretty) JavaScript taking so much time? I don't think it should. Perhaps you should disable compilation for irrelevant browsers (irrelevant for debugging purposes), thereby reducing compilation time significantly.
One idea is to minimize compile time by reducing the permutations (different version for each browser) during development.
In your module.gwt.xml force an user agent, for example gecko1_8 (Firefox 2).
<!-- User Agent -->
<set-property name="user.agent" value="gecko1_8" />
If you're using i18n you can also limit the locales used during development.
Yes, I was just wanting this today FireBug + GWT. If you are adventurous you could look into builds of GWT 2.0 where Out Of Process Hosted Mode will be available letting you debug in FireFox or other browsers. Dhttp://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/wiki/DesignOOPHM">esign: Out of Process Hosted Mode
The source for GWT is here http://google-web-toolkit.googlecode.com/svn/branches/
I personally haven't hit the pain threshold to build this yet because I keep hearing 2.0 is "close"
It's not a debugger in the same mould as Firebug but the GWT Log console is really, really handy for finding out what's happening within the JavaScript.