We are trying to port existing thick client to thin client. We are looking at the different technologies, We are trying out different options. We tried GXT as well as GWT in our sample excercises. Which one do you think we should go ahead with? Are there any other better frameworks?
Answer
It's several years I work with GWT (but not GXT). I'm using free version of SmartGWT which is a framework based on a google web toolkit (like GXT).
I personally think if you want (& you have enough reasons) to use GWT, then its a wise choice to use a framework above it such as GXT or SmartGWT or others. This frameworks provide a lot of abilities & ready widgets which make development progress so easy & fun, but they have also their own disadvantages, such as increasing your client side js code size, incompatibility with some browsers, execution overhead which may increase response time a little & so on.
Anyway, beside all weaknesses, I believe that it worth to use them & so I suggest you to USE a GWT-based framework, but before choosing one, take care about these notes:
- development community, their activeness & speed of adapting with new releases of JDK, GWT & specially new versions of browsers & availability of samples, resources & discussion forums
- the variety of provided widgets & ease of coding for developing new softwares
- the ability to customize widgets
- the ability to integrating with the other technologies & widgets from other similar frameworks
- supported development IDEs
- & finally the license & pricing