Review: GWT in Practice

September 2nd, 2010

Buy it now $44.99 $9.86

If you’re a web developer, you know that you can use Ajax to add rich, user-friendly, dynamic features to your applications. With the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), a new Ajax tool from Google that automatically converts Java to JavaScript, you can build Ajax applications using the Java language.

GWT in Practice is an example-driven, code-rich book designed for web developers already familiar with the basics of GWT who now want hands-on experience. After a quick review of GWT fundamentals, GWT in Practice presents scores of handy, reusable solutions to the problems you face when you need to move beyond “Hello World” and “proof of concept” applications. This book skips the theory and looks at the way things really work when you’re building. I also shows you where GWT fits into the Enterprise Java Developer’s toolset. Written by expert authors Robert Cooper and Charlie Collins, this book combines sharp insight with hard-won experience. Readers will find thorough coverage of all aspects of GWT development from the basic GWT concepts to in depth real world example applications.

The first part of the book is a rapid introduction to the GWT methodology The second part of the book then delves into several practical examples which further demonstrate core aspects of the toolkit The book concludes by presenting several larger GWT applications including drag and drop support for UI elements, data binding, processing streaming data, handling application state, automated builds, and continuous integration.

Along the way GWT in Practice covers many additional facets of working with the toolkit. Various development tools are used throughout the book, including Eclipse, NetBeans, IDEA, Ant, Maven, and, of course, the old fashioned command line. The book also addresses integrating GWT with existing applications and services along with enterprise and team development.

No Comments »

How WiMax Measures Up Against the Competition

September 1st, 2010

By now, you have probably heard of - and been confused by - WiMax. For many people, it is not exactly clear just what this term refers to. Is it a wireless telecommunications service? Is it a high speed Internet service? The simple answer is that it is both of these things.

One way in which wireless technologies can be classified is by their range - that is, the amount of space that a given technology is capable of covering. Because of the large coverage areas that it is capable of delivering, WiMax can be considered a WMAN, which is short for wireless metropolitan area network. This technology can be used to provide wireless Internet access to fixed locations, such as to homes that are located in rural, remote, or undeveloped areas where the wires needed for services like DSL and cable do not reach. But the context in which you have more likely heard this technology referred to is its mobile applications.

Everyone, it seems, is talking about using WiMax service to get mobile Internet. When it comes to delivering high speed mobile Internet, this technology works a bit like cell phone technology, by using base stations or towers to distribute signals to portable electronic telcommunications devices, like smart phones. In certain ways, these two types of services are very similar and have similar challenges and obstacles to deal with. For this reason, when trying to explain or to understand this new technology, it makes sense to compare it to and see how it measures up against cellular technology. As a WiMax competitor, cellular technology has a bit of an edge, simply because it has been around longer and has more equipment and systems in place to deal with problems like dropped calls and gaps in service. Nonetheless, it has been predicted that eventually the cost of running WiMax networks will be cheaper than that of running cellular networks, which will give the new technology an advantage.

To get a better understanding of WiMax, another thing you can compare it to is Wi-Fi. After all, it has been touted as sort of a pumped up version of Wi-Fi. Some people even believe that in the long run Wi-Fi will end up being replaced entirely by this new technology. But both of these ideas are exaggerated at best, if not completely wrong. The biggest difference between these two types of technology is in their range. Wi-Fi is not wireless LAN, or local area network, not a WMAN. This means that its coverage areas are much smaller than those of WiMax - we are talking about the difference between meters and kilometers here. For this reason, the two types of technology serve different purposes and it is not likely that one will replace the other altogether. Nonetheless, WiMax does offer users opportunities that Wi-Fi does not. And the freedom that comes with having a high speed Internet connection that you can connect to from anywhere throughout an entire city is a very appealing prospect to a lot of busy people.

To find out more about how WiMax measures up against the competition, click here. Sign up for clear internet wimax today and start enjoying truly mobile high speed Internet.

No Comments »

« Previous Entries