is smartGWT really as slow as its showcase is?

Question

I've started implementing my web application using smartGWT. Is it really as slow as it is on the showcase?

It's practically unreasonably slow.

I'm in a new empty project that all it does it display a modal window with a login form in onLoad.

this takes about 1 full minute to load.

I think it's just waiting for something and then poof it's loaded.

I'm running it from eclipse, just clicking the green run button.

Answer 1

Initially Smartgwt will take a long time to load in client's browser because it downloads 2mb of javascript files. But performancewise it is not slow because smartgwt layouts are based on divs, but GWT layouts are based on tables.

The drawbacks of SmartGWT are:

1. Downloads lot of javascript files.
2. There is no image bundles used in smartgwt. Browser will make lot of requests for images. For a single button smartgwt uses 9 images.
3. Customization is difficult. Applying our own css style is bit difficult compare to GWT.

Features:

1. Datasource
2. Existing attractive widgets
3. Implementing animations are easy

So using smartGWT is depends on your requirement.If you have more time you can develop with GWT. If you have less time and you have to develop a big application use smartGWT.