Customer Reviews

Google Web Toolkit Solutions: More Cool & Useful Stuff

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
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I've tried at length to obtain the source code used in the book. Geary leaves it to the user to acquire the addons that he uses in his examples. Yes I've tried going the Safari route. Without signing up for a "90 day free then we charge you big" trial, you won't have any luck. I also read the previous post where he mentioned that he obtained the code from the website. If you go there now, the code has been pulled so I'm back to being forced to sign up for Safari which I won't do. I did read through the examples and do what I could. Instead of this book, I'd recommend "Google Web Toolkit Applications" by Dewsbury. The examples may not be as advanced as these, but at least you can run them.

You can easily find most of its content on the internet, but you may feel more confident having it somewhere near.
Chapters 8 & 9 (Flex table & File uploads) were very helpful for me. I used that solution in my small project and it worked like a charm.
Anyway, I give 5-stars only for books I consider outstanding. I'd give 4.5 if I could.
My advice: read very carefully what is covered in the book, if you need at least 3-4 solutions (or you believe you might need it in the future) buy it if not try Dewsbury's book.

I posted a review (back in January, this updated review is posted in late May 2008) that slammed Prentice Hall for not making the code samples available from anywhere except through a 90 day free trail thru Safari (an online subscription based service).

The editor and one author responded and let me know that the site was incorrectly missing in the book, but that a site (called coolandusefulgwt with the obvious ending.) was available and has all material easily downloadable. I have checked out this site and confirmed that the code is indeed available. It is a very cool site in that it the entire site (or most of it) is a GWT application!

I applaud the editor and authors efforts to inform me and other purchasers of the book... and they also explained that the susbscription based service is not going to be the sole method to get code from Prentice Hall books...which is even better news.

I am giving this book 5 stars as it is a very good book for GWT beginners and intermediate programmers... escpecially those looking for info on custom widgets/controls. The authors did a splendid job of presenting the material in a well layed out manner, The book takes the GWT (sparsely documented by Google) and make it alot more accessible to the programming community.

Now that the source code (and more) are available on the new site, there is no reason why anyone interested in studying GWT would not want this book in their personal library.

In fact, if you are looking to buy this book, and are on the fence, go check out the website and you will get a good idea of what this book will do for you and I think it will help you make an informed decision to buy this great resource.