Rich Internet application solutions

Question

I am evaluating Rich Internet application solutions to use in next project. I have heard of following solutions -

1. Adobe Flex
2. extJS
3. Jboss Richfaces
4. IceFaces
5. Oracle ADF
6. JavaFX
7. Silverlight
8. GWT

I want to know if there are more solutions available.

I would appreciate if you can provide any valuable feedback on the above solutions.

Answer 1

IT Mill Toolkit is a "server-driven" framework built on top of GWT.

Comment: coming from a heavy PHP and Java-hostile background, I found Toolkit to be very pleasing to use pretty quickly. Being able to write nothing but (the strongly typed, nicely OO-oriented) Java is nice, considering the fact that what you change in the code is pretty instantially reflected on what you see in the browser.

It's a bit tricky to set up, but IT Mill has an Eclipse plugin that supposedly helps with that. The only thing is that the plugin itself is a tad unintuitive to use :)

0.02€

Reply to comment: The biggest difference between GWT and IMT is that GWT operates entirely inside the browser (a hostile/exploitable environment with e.g. FireBug), while IMT uses GWT only to render the server-side state. So, while you can edit any values you want in the browser with both GWT and IMT, GWT will happily accept the user-edited variable values, IMT keeps track on the values server-side, and doesn't allow any discrepancies between the client and server.

Another big difference is that GWT widgets need to be compiled every time you do any changes to them with the relatively time consuming GWT cross-compiler (compiles Java to JavaScript). IMT, on the other hand, needs only to be redeployed to the servlet container, and the changes are there, because the GWT widgets inside IMT don't need to be recompiled. With Tomcat, it's virtually instantaneous (i.e. as soon as Tomcat notices that Eclipse has recompiled the classes on the fly).

*@the_drow:* Not being familiar with Dijit, here's an answer: Dojo is javascript only, meaning it's client side only. Vaadin (née IT Mill Toolkit) lives partly in the server side too (calls itself "server driven"), so you can't hack the client side just by changing JavaScript variable values. There's a chart that compares Vaadin with other comparable products. Dojo isn't included, but JQuery is, which is vaguely similar to Dojo

Answer 2

i had an experience with Spring Webflow + Rich Faces with mixed results - time to get the results on screen is really short, but it's pain to fine tune the presentation part.

ie if you are building some tech oriented/backend /standard GUIs - it's ok, if you are going to build a frontend used by millions web2.0-ers you end up messing with presentation part css/javascript big time.

Answer 3

After evaluating and reading various RIA solutions, I have finally selected GWT and GWT-Ext. I see these benefits for me and my team -

1. We are used to Eclipse so this is an advantage.
2. Ability to use Java Debugger in Eclipse is extremely helpful.
3. GWT Hosted mode in eclipse, so no compile and deploy required on every change.
4. Big developer community
5. Lots of ready to use components
6. Prior Java knowledge helpful
7. Similar to swing and the team have worked on Swing in earlier project.
8. Look and feel is also good
9. Maven support is also available.
10. Can write Junit test cases.
11. No other language knowledge required apart from Java.
12. Easy RPC configuration based on annotations.