Ext JS 2.1 now GPL :(

Unfortunately Ext JS 2.1 (and Ext GWT 1.0) have been released under the GPL. This will make Ext more difficult to sell to corporate clients.

Ext JS 2.0.2 is still available for download under a LGPL licence and can be used with the GWT integration found in the GWT-Ext project (not to be confused with Ext GWT). i.e. GWT-Ext 2.0.3 and Ext 2.0.2 are still both LGPL. I wonder if Ext GWT 1.0 (GPL) started life as GWT-Ext 2.0.3 (LGPL)…

I wonder if a fork will appear… or perhaps a Yahoo! UI on GWT or a Tibco GI on GWT. Both YUI and GI are BSD and so very business friendly.

I discovered a promise of a tibcogi4gwt project but nothing more

Update: more info can be found in a post by the author of GWT-Ext.

GWT not just for SPAs!

Bruce Johnson busts the myth that Google Web Toolkit is only for single page applications – amongst other things – in the video presentation available from InfoQ.

Thoughts on web application frameworks

Here’s a brain dump of my current thoughts on Web Frameworks:

• Click with OpenRico. A simple and effective however there are some gaps for more complex flows. Some good OpenRico examples for simple DHTML effects and AJAX.
• Wicket. More complicated than Click and generates less HTML for you. However, it would work well with Web designers – templates are valid XHTML. I like it but the documentation leaves something to be desired.

On the radar is JSF, GWT, Tibco GI, Yahoo UI, Dojo:

• JSF with an open source stack of MyFaces+Tomahawk + Facelets (templating to avoid JSP)
  • consider JBoss Seam for scoping beans
  • Perhaps with Exadel Eclipse Plugin

    JBoss have recently open sourced this plugin – perhaps they purchased Exadel? (Only found out a couple of nights ago about that one)

  • Consider Netbeans. It has some good JSF support.
• GWT. Looks great for single-page web applications like Gmail.

will update again soon…