Customer Reviews

GWT in Action: Easy Ajax with the Google Web Toolkit

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Usually, I really like the "in action" series, but "GWT in Action" disappointed me. The book focus on examples "in action" almost to the exclusion of having the reader understand the concepts. It wasn't until the end of the book that I really understood what was going on.

I did like the step by step instructions on how to get started. The examples were good if you needed to do what the example did. It was tough to extrapolate to other scenarios though. Some of the code examples were rather long and involved. The end of the book was also good. It went into detail on HTML form controls, JSON, testing, deployment and most importantly - how GWT works. These would have been nice earlier in the book. Especially the HTML form section. The majority of AJAX at this time is related to forms. Since the cover says "easy AJAX with GWT", I expected more on form based AJAX examples.

I felt that the book was trying to reach too broad an audience. For beginners without an understanding of JavaScript/HTML/DOM, I think it is overwhelming. The book provides "what's new in GWT 1..4", but the book is overkill for someone already using GWT. Most of the time the book treats what happens under the hood of GWT as magic and other times it becomes important. This switching of focus is a bit confusing.

This is the 2nd book I bought to do GWT. "GWT in Action" is by far the best book to learn GWT (at least when I bought it in summer 2007). Since I had already been using GWT, I used this book to successfully resolve a number of issues I was having, especially with event handling.

An area that could use improvement in future editions is explaining how to integrate with existing javascript code libraries, something that really has to be assumed is a requirement with GWT. A good javascript reference, like O'Reilly's "Javascript: The Definitive Guide" should also be acquired.

I use Instantiations GWTDesigner Eclipse plugin to do my code work.

This book is very basic. I was exploring the GWT RPC functionality. I found RPC example hardly useful to do anything with it. If you are looking for a book to develop RPC applications, I do not recommend this book.

Get the Dashboard example source code first and try out before buying the book. I was not impressed with the Dashboard example. Book spends most of the time building the example application.

Not awful, but suffers from two faults:

(1) It's very dated: mostly covers GWT 1.3, and we are on, what, 2.1 now? Huge changes, including Java 5 support, make much of what is said incorrect.

(2) There's a lot of filler: server push/pull models explained, servlets, JUnit... completely unnecessary. The book could have been reduced by a third if this material were omitted.

That said, I learned quite a bit from reading the book. The authors' writing style is quite good and it's mostly a pleasant read. The low rating is mostly due to the material being dated, and honestly, Manning should have brought out a second edition by now.

I was looking for a book to give a rapid introduction to GWT. I have a lot of experience with JAVA GUI and hard core javascript so I was hoping to find something that I could use not only an introduction but also as a reference. Initially I found it good as it had a pretty good write up on JSNI. However, I find myself more and more disappointed as I try and use it as a reference. The examples are partial. The book provides examples on how to do something which at first glance seem fine, but then when you try to use them you realize the setup is missing so additional research is needed. Also, things that should be covered in detail are not. Examples:
1. GWT history. Vaguely talks about how to record it but not how to handle it (History.addValueChangeHandler is not mentioned)
2. Properties. The section on providing and extending properties is exceedingly confusing. I didn't have the time to try and make sense of it and went elsewhere for information.
Unfortunately it took me too long to find out how crappy this book so I can't send it back to get my money back. As I've paid for it I will still attempt to use it as a reference when I need to, but I suspect before long it will end up gathering dust with the other out of date books that I can't bare to throw out and the crappy books I've bought over the years that I try and justify ownership of.

I started to learn about GWT for the first time about 6 months ago, and this was one of three GWT textbooks that I purchased (The others were GWT In Practice and Google Web Toolkit Applications).

Overall, I used GWT In Action as a book to go to when GWT In Practice was a little harder to understand. GWT In Practice teaches GWT, but at a faster pace and using stronger software development techniques. When I needed to dive in deeper to a specific subject, GWT In Action was the perfect book.

I found the explanations easy, straight to the point, and very thorough - something which wasn't quite the same in other textbooks. Whereas GWT In Action may not be an advanced textbook in creating commercial applications, it is a perfect intro book to get the core concepts learned thoroughly and well.

The textbook is a little dated now, and the sample applications show it. However, as of the time of this review, most of the material is still perfectly relevant. There are some new features / objects available in GWT now that were not before, but all the old ones are still there. The textbook is not too outdated - it's still worth the purchase if you want a thorough coverage of the core GWT features.

Simply put - an easy to understand, thorough book on GWT.

GWT in Action is a good read, with the pace and depth of instruction just right, suggesting these guys enjoy writing. They like explaining stuff, and the book's editors would have been hard-pressed to eliminate a paragraph without losing an interesting and useful tip or aside. And these guys are GWT software library developers themselves (see the GWT Widget Library at SourceForge, by Mr Hanson). I was enthralled by the GWT presentations at the Google Developer Day 2007 in Sydney, and immediately bought Google Web Toolkit: GWT Java Ajax Programming by Prabhakar Chaganti. I liked it, but GWT in Action is significantly better, which I bought soon after. It's the best.

I liked this book. It walks you though the subject with enough detail to get you started. It will not give you a very deep insight into how GWT is implemented, but still leaves you with sufficient understanding and plenty of practical examples to borrow

I was very impressed with the quality of the writing as well as the depth of coverage. The authors explain them well and it is easy to follow the examples. I especially liked the fact that authors present GWT code using design pattern, e.g. Facade - I was able to re-factor my own code.

Using this book, I was able to teach myself GWT and also successfully build a GWT based Ajax application at work.

I would recommend this book for web developers currently writing web applications in any language and who are looking to add Ajax to their application. Although Java back ends benefit the greatest from GWT with GWT-RPC, JSON, a lightweight data format, can be used and so ASP.NET, PHP, Perl CGI, etc. can be used. Also a great reference guide for those currently using GWT. Here is a more detailed review (and a shameless plug for my blog): http://www.jlhdevelopment.com/wordpress/?p=6

Also check out this title coming out soon: GWT in Practice