GWT 1.6 going to release soon

Happy to see that GWT 1.6 going to release soon. Estimated on Q1 2009. Compiler performance improvements is a high demand feature in gwt group from all GWT developer. Hopefully it can reduce the compilation time to 50% and more. Other than that will be Developer Guided Code splitting, to avoid download all javascript at the first load.

Release 1.6

• New compiled file deployment structure
• Easily compile into a war file structure, making it easy to deploy your compiled GWT application into standard servlet containers
• Migration from Tomcat to Jetty hosted mode server
• A more pluggable architecture for the hosted mode server will enable developers to use servlet containers other than Tomcat with the Hosted Mode browser
• Uniform event handlers
• Event handlers will be implemented in a uniform fashion across all widgets, with listeners deprecated
• DatePicker, LazyPanel migrated in from incubator
• New widgets from the incubator
• String performance improvements
• StringBuilder uses deferred binding to optimize string appends per-browser
• Compiler performance improvements
• 1.6 will introduce parallel permutation compilations and other performance tweaks for faster compiles

Post 1.6

• Developer Guided Code splitting
• Developer guided code splitting is a mechanism that allows developers to specify asynchronous split points in their code where the code base can be split and downloaded in different chunks. This is currently an R&D project but looks promising.
• Analysis of compiled code, aka Story of your compile (SOYC)
• Aims to give developers concrete information about their compiled JavaScript, such as which Java classes are generating the most JavaScript code.
• In-browser hosted mode, aka Out-of-process Hosted Mode (OOPHM)
• In-browser hosted mode will allow GWT developers to debug their apps within a browser rather than GWT's hosted mode browser
• UI Binder
• The UI Binder will allow the creation of UI elements in a declarative fashion. Watch for UI Binder to land in the GWT incubator soon.
  
• Client Bundle
• Client Bundle implements the power of deferred binding used in Image Bundle in a generic fashion so that it can be used on many resources. These include TextResource, ImageResource, and CSSResource
• RPC performance improvements
• Ongoing work to improve the performance of RPC