This book contains a lot of errors in the code. This influences me a lot.
But it's a book to take a look for beginner. don't spend time on that.

Automagically convert Java to JavaScript.

Thus begins the seemingly curious proposition of the Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

Of course, it's about a lot more than that.

For one thing, GWT addresses a key gap in the rapid delivery of the Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) based applications that are driving eyeballs and mindshare to Google's Web site.

By the time you've read Prabhakar Chaganti's book on the GWT, you'll be significantly wiser on at least two fronts. You'll know that:

1) There's a broad-and-deep software engineering ecosystem around the GWT that is fueling progress and delivering highly significant results.

2) Chaganti is an excellent guide with the ability to negotiate this ecosystem and drive you towards tangible outcomes.

Even though the book I reviewed was a complimentary copy provided by the publisher, I would happily pay for my own copy, and heartily recommend this book to others having interests in the GWT.

By the way, Packt has an articulated scheme when it comes to Open Source projects:

"Packt Open Source Project Royalty Scheme

Packt believes in Open Source. When we sell a book written on an Open Source project, we pay a royalty directly to that project. As a result of purchasing one of our Open Source books, Packt will have given some of the money received to the Open Source project.

In the long term, we see ourselves and yourselves, as customers and readers of our books, as part of the Open Source ecosystem, providing sustainable revenue for the projects we publish on. Our aim at Packt is to establish publishing royalties as an essential part of the service and support business model that sustains Open Source."

I cannot suggest that Packt is unique in this approach. Regardless, their approach is certainly welcome.

For an extended review, please see http://ianlumb.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/book-review-google-web-toolkit/.

This book is appropriate for complete beginners to the Google Web Toolkit. It is quite light on theory, but very hands-on and oriented towards practical exercises. Once you have worked through this book, you will have a very good understanding of GWT, though you will need a separate book for a more theoretical approach.

The orientation towards practical exercises is very good, as are the supplemental explanations in the short "What Just Happened?" paragraphs. Sometimes the small errors dotted around the book are a hindrance. Nevertheless, I very highly recommend this book; it will definitely get you up and running from zero onwards.

Overview of chapters:

Chapter 1: Getting Started. Basic conceptual overview, pointers to how to get started via websites, brief explorations of some of the samples bundled with the GWT download. Pity that Eclipse receives full focus, without mentioning alternatives, such as at least a mention of IntelliJ and NetBeans IDE.

Chapter 2: Creating a New GWT Application. A good, is slightly chaotically described first application. Here the small errors are a serious hindrance, especially on page 27, where the missing dot before 'quoteLabel' in the CSS can be a big stumbling block to the newbie. A lot is covered in this chapter, maybe it could have been split across two chapters instead.

Chapter 3: Creating Services. This chapter covers a crucial topic for GWT and does so very well. Without this chapter, the next chapter doesn't make sense. The explanations interspersed throughout the chapter are very good.

Chapter 4: Interactive Forms. A series of samples, each showing off a cool AJAX feature in the context of GWT: live search, password strength checker, autofill forms, sortable tables, dynamic lists, and Flickr-style editable tables. By the end of this chapter (50 pages long!), if you take your time and read the code carefully as you use it, you'll already have got your money's worth from this book.

Chapter 5: Responsive Complex Interfaces. Here we go into more complex scenarios: pageable tables, editable tree nodes, log spy, sticky notes, and jigsaw puzzle.

Chapter 6: Browser Effects with JSNI and JavaScript Libraries. Our detailed tour of GWT-AJAX sweet spots continue, with Moo.FX, Rico rounded corners, color selector, and Script.aculo.us effects. The misalignment of code, as throughout this book, is clearly apparent on page 149, in this chapter for example, which makes the book seem a bit sloppy in places.,

Chapter 7: Custom Widgets. A calendar widget and a weather widget are tackled in this chapter. Again advanced scenarios, but well explained.

Chapter 8: Unit Test. Great to have this chapter, and the next, in this book. Because, at this point, one has covered so many scenarios that one begins wondering about testing and I8N.

Chapter 9: I8N and XML. It's not completely clear why the parsing of XML is found within the same chapter as internationalization. Nevertheless, especially the XML parsing is interesting and is something I want to explore further. The code is all there and practical as always.

Chapter 10: Deployment. Tomcat and Ant deployment are covered, though it would have been nice if some other servers had been mentioned too.

Appendix A: Running the Samples. The samples are not easy to work with, they're all interrelated, relying on a common set of files, and one needs to pull them apart to work with them. Despite that, these are a crucial support mechanism for the book and do the job well.

This was my first GWT book. I liked the book and was dazzled by the shear brilliance of the team that conceived and wrote GWT. It's a good introduction to a fascinating and practical library for writing web applications. As a follow-up I read the longer and deeper GWT in Action: Easy Ajax with the Google Web Toolkit which I also recommend. You cannot have too many GWT books!

I got this book because it was the only one I could find on the market at the time. It seemed to me that this book was rushed to market; a good portion of the code examples contained errors so it would not compile or did not produce the results that were expected.
The downloadable code contains working code but the publisher didn't bother to put the code into the correct directory structure; everything is in the base directory even though the files themselves are in packages.

This book is not substantive enough to justify a $40+ price tag especially since it's riddled with errors I would recommend one of the other books on GWT that are now on the market over this one, they are more sustantive, better put together, and more reasonably priced for what you get.

I got this book because it was the only one on the market at the time as far as I could find. Since this book came out there have been several new books published on the topic of GWT. My impression of this book is that it was rushed to market, half of the code would not work without extensive changes and the downloadable code contains "working" code except that the publisher couldn't be bother to put the code into the proper directory structure. For example, HelloGWT.java from chapter 2 is part of the "com.packtpub.gwtbook.hellogwt.client" package but rather than putting the file in the appropriate directory structure that file sits at the root of the chapter's directory. So, in order to use the code, one must build the appropriate directory structure to correspond to the package per file or edit each file to remove the package definitions. Lather-rinse-repeat for chapters 3-9.

This book is not substantive enough to justify a $40+ price tag especially since it's riddled with errors Now that there are other books on GWT it's worth even less.

I was very disappointed with "Google Web Toolkit GWT Java AJAX Programming" by Prabhakar
Chaganti. First is a general sloppiness with regard to getting technical details right. The book presents many examples but it becomes clear early on that the author has not ever run the vast majority of the example code in print. How do I know. Because I had to clean up numerous compile time errors before they would run at all. The types of errors are very basic Java novice syntax errors but they reveal a sloppiness and a low standard held by the author as well as by the publisher PACKT ( where was the editor ).
I tried to get around this problem by assuming that the publishing standard was the problem and I could get the source code for the examples and everything would be fine.
Wrong. The book promises source code for the examples in the book but if you go to the web site ( at least as of July 1st, 2007 ) and you want to get source code for examples the first thing you have to do is to select from a menu the book you want code for. The title "Google Web Toolkit ...." was not on the menu so I could not get code.
I have sent email to the author explaining the problems but I have not received any response. I have spent good money but have gotten nothing.

This book does a good job on laying out GWT, as the sub title, it's practical but only at entry level. Note it has zero architecture discuss, and doesn't cover some very important Web topics like browser History and bookmark, which GWT very good at.

If you write new GWT application from scratch, this one is an easy reading. But if you need integration GWT to existing project, this book is not very helpful.

It's too expensive for a such a little book.

For $44 this book is a big disappointment. I've found many examples are missing critical information for completing examples. On the plus side, having to figure out what the author/editors overlooked in explanation forces you to really figure out gwt (on your own!).

"Google Web Toolkit - GWT Java AJAX Programming" - I learned a lot about GWT reading this book. The book assumes you know Java and web programming (HTML/JavaScript/Web packaging) well. Some of the examples use other technologies such as JDBC and XPath, but they are understandable without this knowledge.

I liked the examples as they were things you would want to do. The examples range from self contained form tasks to a full widget. The examples appeared to be "complete" with a description before each section. While there are explanations at the end of the example, some examples are really long. On example has 3.75 pages of getters and setters. Some examples emphasize business logic more than GWT. Other examples were really good. I think the examples get better if you read the book a few times. I was having trouble following the large code segments at the beginning and it got easier once I understood GWT. Basically, you should feel comfortable learning from code.

I wasn't always that clear on what objects/APIs were available in different scenarios, but the GWT API online provides that information nicely. I'd like the book shows me how to do something rather than just repeat what is online. I think this book and the website complement each other nicely by providing different perspectives.

All in all, I am happy with the book. It helps jump into GWT and provides a useful resource to learn by example.

A practicum is a course designed to give students practice in a previously studied field, and that's what this book is: if you are a developer who understands Java and at least something about web development, this practical guide will immediately get you up to speed on working, practical uses of GWT. This is not about the internals of GWT, but about how to use it, and, if you haven't heard, Google Web Toolkit lets Java developers create Ajaxified web applications without becoming Javascript experts. One of the nicest things about this book is that the clear and logical explanations are accompanied by runnable examples that actually compile and work as is! Amazing! This may not be your last book on Ajax and GWT, but it probably should be your first since it puts you immediately on your feet with a clear, firm grasp both of what this new technology is all about as well as how to use it today.