Russell D. Holloway said
I started to learn about GWT for the first time about 6 months ago, and this was one of three GWT textbooks that I purchased (The others were GWT In Practice and Google Web Toolkit Applications).
Overall, I used GWT In Action as a book to go to when GWT In Practice was a little harder to understand. GWT In Practice teaches GWT, but at a faster pace and using stronger software development techniques. When I needed to dive in deeper to a specific subject, GWT In Action was the perfect book.
I found the explanations easy, straight to the point, and very thorough - something which wasn't quite the same in other textbooks. Whereas GWT In Action may not be an advanced textbook in creating commercial applications, it is a perfect intro book to get the core concepts learned thoroughly and well.
The textbook is a little dated now, and the sample applications show it. However, as of the time of this review, most of the material is still perfectly relevant. There are some new features / objects available in GWT now that were not before, but all the old ones are still there. The textbook is not too outdated - it's still worth the purchase if you want a thorough coverage of the core GWT features.
Simply put - an easy to understand, thorough book on GWT.
YongSung Kim said
I was very impressed with the quality of the writing as well as the depth of coverage. The authors explain them well and it is easy to follow the examples. I especially liked the fact that authors present GWT code using design pattern, e.g. Facade - I was able to re-factor my own code.
Using this book, I was able to teach myself GWT and also successfully build a GWT based Ajax application at work.
Eva Pawlowski said
I am starting with GWT with this book after using various internet tutorials. The book proved really helpful to get me started. As an added bonus, the authors really like to write and provide small yet inspiring examples which you can download and test yourself.
Some reviewer criticized the order of the chapters. I did not have any problems with that - there is a very useful short introduction in the beginning. I could jump ahead to interesting chapters like RPC without any problem.
Jason Hurt said
I would recommend this book for web developers currently writing web applications in any language and who are looking to add Ajax to their application. Although Java back ends benefit the greatest from GWT with GWT-RPC, JSON, a lightweight data format, can be used and so ASP.NET, PHP, Perl CGI, etc. can be used. Also a great reference guide for those currently using GWT. Here is a more detailed review (and a shameless plug for my blog): http://www.jlhdevelopment.com/wordpress/?p=6
Also check out this title coming out soon: GWT in Practice
Alex Tolley said
This is the 2nd book I bought to do GWT. "GWT in Action" is by far the best book to learn GWT (at least when I bought it in summer 2007). Since I had already been using GWT, I used this book to successfully resolve a number of issues I was having, especially with event handling.
An area that could use improvement in future editions is explaining how to integrate with existing javascript code libraries, something that really has to be assumed is a requirement with GWT. A good javascript reference, like O'Reilly's "Javascript: The Definitive Guide" should also be acquired.
I use Instantiations GWTDesigner Eclipse plugin to do my code work.
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