Re: [Tyndale STEP - Programming] Don't Google Web Apps and Web Tool sites need to...

I believe what happens with GWT is the following:

you compile your GWT, and you get your server side java files, and your generated javascript files. All javascript files are generated and available for download on the server, but the client browser will only request the javascript file specific to the browser/language he is using saving on bandwidth, processing, etc.

GWT apps as far as I know can be hosted anywhere on a server. The server could be for eg. a apache server hosted by someone on the web, or alternatively a in-memory server possibly such as Jetty. I don't know whether you could run GWT compiled web apps on GEARS.  As far as I can tell, GEARS just serves static content such as javascript/etc. But if we're wanting to integrate with JSword, then we ll need server code. We could use Jetty with GWT though...

2009/8/17 Tyndale STEP Project <TyndaleSTEP@gmail.com>

Chris, thanks for raising these questions about Google Apps.
I think the licensing model is OK, but you made me look harder at Google Apps, and
I'm not sure that they can be made to work for an off-line product.

If I understand it correctly, Google Web Apps are always on the web.
And, Google Web Toolkit produces Java files which are compiled into JavaScript when the browser calls the server,
because the JavaScript files are optimised for the different browsers on different platforms.
The whole point of using GWT is that web pages are produced which are always up to date with the latest 'improvements' in browsers.
This is a wonderful solution to the changes in browsers (I've just spent an unpleasant afternoon fixing apps which don't work in IE8),
but it doesn't help us with offline applications.

At the introduction to GWT (at http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/overview.html) it says:

Optimize the JavaScript script downloads based on user profile

Deferred binding is a feature of GWT that generates many versions of your compiled code, only one of which needs to be loaded by a particular client during bootstrapping at runtime. Each version is generated on a per browser basis, along with any other axis that your application defines or uses. For example, if you were to internationalize your application using GWT's Internationalization module, the GWT compiler would generate versions of your application per browser environment, such as "Firefox in English", "Firefox in French", "Internet Explorer in English", etc... As a result, the deployed JavaScript code is compact and quicker to download than if you coded if/then statements in JavaScript. Learn more

Did I misunderstand what GWT is about?

We need stable code which is sufficiently low-tech to not come to grief with changes in browsers.
Occasionally we'll have to produce updates to fix changes, but hopefully we can do this in small files.

David IB

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Posted By Tyndale STEP Project to Tyndale STEP - Programming on 8/17/2009 09:45:00 AM