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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Poor Editing, mediocre book, September 6, 2009
This review is from: GWT in Practice (Paperback)
I am surprised to hear so much lofty praise for this book. It is mediocre at best, and the editing is quite horrible. Here the advice I would give the authors and in particular the editors:
- I hate having to flip from one chapter to the previous one in order to find a particular snippet being referenced. If you are starting a project, all the source for that needs to be close to each other. I dislike being told 'Go find table 1.1, (with no page number given) and use the code from there.
- The code examples given clearly have NEVER been through the compiler. There are missing methods in examples, and silly typos that are quite unacceptable since it leads me to question the effort put into creating the book. (see page 52, listing 2.12 for example, - Private is NOT the same as private. setInitDisplay is never defined. )
- My preference - and probably for a number of other people - is to use the well defined hello world approach, rather than a discourse on how configuration is to be set up. Eclipse should be introduced earlier. I'm sure others would disagree, but getting a HelloWorld going gets my blood flowing
- The section on design patterns is a TOTAL waste. Please dont introduce examples that focus on MVC, not GWT. I am not reading GWT to understand how MVC works. Make simpler examples that gets rid of this fluff, and focusses on GWT.
- How exactly does showing what StringBuffer looks like in pretty & obfuscated mode help the user? It looks like an attempt to pad the size of the book
Manning books are always a hit and miss. THis is a clear miss. Really, the editors need to pull up their socks and get things out right, not get it out quick.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book on software development as well as GWT, August 26, 2008
This review is from: GWT in Practice (Paperback)
For starters: I am one of the pilot developers in my company (a large Fortune 100 Financial Institution) doing GWT development. We are about to release our first product to the business. So I've spent the last 18 months or so learning and beating my way through GWT. In the process, I've bought all the GWT books that are out there. Straight to the point: this is the best one out there. Period. Cooper & Collins have produced an excellent book on User Interface development for the next generation....and you get an outstanding understanding of basic and advanced principles in GWT. Plenty of good stuff for the beginner as well as someone who claims to be fairly advanced. GWT in Action by Rob Hanson used to be my favorite...it still has a soft spot for being the first real GWT book, and a great reference book. Collins & Cooper have managed have the same energy that David Geary has in GWT Solutions (which is lofty praise if you've ever seen David speak about GWT!). I really like Dewsbury's GWT Applications, but GWT in Practice is actually better. There are 3 other GWT books (can't remember their names because they're at home), the 2 black and yellow ones and the flower book...I really like GWT in Action better. I've used gwittir, which is a binding framework from Cooper & Collins, so when I saw that they had written a book, I was psyched. In this day and age when book sales gotta be tough because of all the info on the internet, I was glad to see a book that I didn't think was just a rehashing of what's out there online. Good stuff guys...crank out a new version when GWT 1.5 is fully baked and I'll buy it!
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
GWT in Practice - Excellent Resource, July 1, 2008
This review is from: GWT in Practice (Paperback)
My first thought upon reading the first few chapeters of this book was "Where was this thing when I started to use GWT a few months ago?" The authors have done an excellent job really showing how to use the Google Web Toolkit. My eternal fear when I read these books is that there won't be any content outside of what the product already ships with. Not so in this case at all.
The authors cover the GWT basics, to be sure, but more importantly, they demonstrate a way to really use GWT. They hit upon one of my thoughts when first trying to get my head around GWT: GWT is not a framework; it is a platform at best. They recognize this and help you work with the power and around the limitations of GWT.
The authors demonstrate common patterns and practices in the "language" of GWT. It was extremely satisfying to finally, with the help of this book, be able to articulate and execute all the patterns that I've been using in other systems, (e.g. MVC, PropertyListeners, etc.)
The authors also demonstrate how to use GWT in a variety of environments and build system. These concepts were useful, but I found myself skimming over pages at a time to get back to the "good stuff." (This was my primary knock in not giving it five stars.)
All in all, I highly recommend and I'll be ensuring that my team each learn the concepts presented.
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