I guess I see two separate issues:
1. GWT's stock set of widgets is missing a widget that one may need
(like a DatePicker or a ComboBox for example)
2. GWT's stock set of widgets isn't pretty enough (or doesn't match
your preferred look and feel)
For issue #1: I like the gwt team's focus on core (or kernal'ish)
issues and getting their core architecture right. The community can
fill in the missing widgets. There are certain tasks which can't (in a
practical way) be done outside of the GWT team (like improve compiler
speed, fix the event handling model, etc.). And there are other things
that are easily done by the gwt community: make new widgets. In fact,
I wish *Sun* had followed this strategy with j2se and j2ee. We didn't
really need most of the 8 million libraries that are mandatorily part
of j2se and j2ee. Many of those can be (and are now) defined by the
community. Other things more kernel'ish, like module versioning,
closures, support for aspect injection, etc can really best be done by
Sun. So what i am saying is that i am happy with (what appears to be)
GWT's strategy of what to include in GWT and what to leave up to the
community.
With that said, it would be nice if *really mainstream* type widgets
(like DatePicker, ScrollTable) were part of GWT's stock widget set.
And from looking at the incubator, it looks like that is the intent.
Regarding issue #2: Why can't the "good looks" be achieved through
CSS? For that matter are there any 3rd parties that provide additional
themes, beyond Standard, Chrome and Dark? Or perhaps a company that
specializes in making additional themes. I would think there would be
great demand for that.
GWT and Widget Suites
Scenario #1: Piecemeal
I would like to see gwt's 3rd party widget market evolve in a
direction where there are 1000's of 3rd party (open source and
commercial) widgets. these widgets can freely be mixed and matched. An
app may use the mostly stock gwt widgets (perhaps styled differently)
plus two or three 3rd party widgets which may or may not be from the
same provider. Each 3rd party widget only increases compiled code size
in proportion to the widget being used. The 3rd party widgets don't
introduce new styling paradigms.
Scenario #2:Suites
Contrast this with a scenario where you have only a few widget
vendors. Each vendor provides a whole suite of widgets, most of which
duplicate what is already provided by the stock gwt widget library.
And that suite then, has a whole new set of its own paradigms and
practices one must follow. And generally the widget suite is setup so
that it really makes more since to use the entire suite. As opposed to
using each widget piecemeal. As an example, adding a single GXT
combobox to my app doubles the compiled code size. Or as another
example check out this DOJO code (non gwt):
<input dojoType="dijit.form.TextBox"/>
<input name="date" value="2005-12-30"
dojoType="dijit.form.DateTextBox">
<input dojoType="dijit.form.TextBox"/>
All 3 components are by dojo. Two TextBox widgets and a DateTextBox.
However, if I replace the two dojo TextBox widgets with just standard
widgets (i.e. get rid of the dojoType attribute), then it suddenly
looks funny. Also, adding just one DOJO widget (the DateTextBox) to my
app doubles its download size and adds an additional *40* http
requests.
So here are my questions:
Q1: Are the available gwt widget suites more like Scenario #1 or
Scenario #2.
Q2: Are they practical to use piecemeal?
Q3: Are people using GWT 3rd party widgets?
a. not at all, sticking exclusively with stock widgets
b. using 3rd party widgets piecemeal
c. using 3rd party widget suites hook, line and sinker, such that
the
app now becomes a GXT app or a SmartClient app
Q4: Has anyone created an app that uses widgets from multiple suites
(say GXT and SmartClient)?
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