imo GWT should not concern itself with CSS. CSS is a mature ecosystem in its own right, with dedicated tools, editors, and experts. By keeping css external, we retain the ability to leverage that ecosystem fully.
Deep css integration is not one of the USP's for GWT. There is no direct problem this integration will solve and you are basically limiting some very powerfull options in your application.
GWT, as a UI application framework, should focus on structure, behavior, and state — the object model — and not on how those objects are visually represented.
In larger organisations there are usually frontend designers and developers in house, by keeping css external, you can use it as a business case to incorporate the existing knowledge and make GWT an easier sell over Js frameworks. For smaller organisations the same still holds, as hiring a ux/html/css expert (or at the moment that can also be done using AI) can get you amazing results for your ui.
Even better: GWT is the only ideal 'glue' between a java ecosystem and existing frontend capabilities. Now hows that for a USP wrt to other UI frameworks.
Op donderdag 16 oktober 2025 om 02:14:04 UTC+2 schreef cbruno...@gmail.com:
Also to get around the GWT CSS weakness, I just inject a TextResource instead of using CssResource.On Wednesday, October 15, 2025 at 7:12:58 PM UTC-5 cbruno...@gmail.com wrote:I second the comment about GWT and CSS. Its its only weakness. Otherwise its really the only real alternative if you dislike the npm universe and want static typing and build system.I use GWT and Spring Boot and make use of MVP and GWT-RPC (using gwt-servlet-jakarta).On Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 3:50:10 AM UTC-5 RobW wrote:Very much our experience. We build commercial apps, and having used GWT for years we know it inside out, so we can build things fast. Yes, it's in maintenance mode, but that also means it's very stable and throws us zero curve balls. We've looked at other frameworks, but all seem to end up with way more code for similar sized solutions - and we're not JS experts, so working in a single Java codebase is way way more comfortable for us. We do divert into JSNI at times to wire in some libs (codemirror, gridstack etc). But we create minimal bindings for just the API calls we need.On Friday, 3 October 2025 at 10:37:49 UTC+1 Frank Hossfeld wrote:A few years ago, i was thinking about moving to React or vue. So I started some pocs to see how thinks work. At the end npm has loaded some malicious code on my computer. Spooky. That's is one of many reasons to stay with GWT. Next, I am familiar with GWT. I know the pitfalls and drawbacks. We'll use GWT, domino-ui, domino-rest, Nalu & Spring Boot and we are happy with it. So, starting a new project, that would be the tool stack. We build business software and get paid for transforming business needs into code. With that tool stack we can create well maintainable and stable software quite fast. We have an incredible low error rate and at least nearly no downtimes.
Jens is right, GWT is in maintenance mode. After GWT was handed to the community, all work is done by a few people (like Colin, Jens, Thomas, Ahmad, etc) without getting paid. Not sure, but I think, in case more people starts sponsoring the project (https://opencollective.com/gwt-project) this might change.Craig Mitchell schrieb am Mittwoch, 1. Oktober 2025 um 06:48:31 UTC+2:> Now I have to build one webapp prototype and I'm wondering if my GWT-fu can still be of any use. Could someone advise what would be the best way to use GWT in 2025?If you want create a quick and easy webapp prototype, I recommend using https://github.com/NaluKit/gwt-maven-springboot-archetype to generate a framework based off Spring Boot.IMHO: GWT's ability to shield you from needing to write JavaScript, is as strong as it has ever been in 2025.On Tuesday, 30 September 2025 at 9:17:26 pm UTC+10 Jens wrote:Generally GWT SDK is in maintenance mode which means there is no incentive to add new features to GWT. Most current work is done in the compiler, emulation and distangling code dependencies to eventually use maven/gradle instead of ant.My main pain point with GWT today is actually CSS. CSS is moving pretty fast and GWT is stuck on an old Closure Stylesheets library. Beside that if you really just want to make a throw away prototype I think I would learn a different JS framework for making such prototypes because you simply have to type less code as in GWT with Java. But of course it also depends on the complexity of the prototype as well.1. I remember GWT was in the process of splitting it into many (J2CL-compatible) submodules, but other than searching Maven Central, I can not find any list of them?Many of them which are considered completed are available on github at https://github.com/orgs/gwtproject/repositories?language=&q=&sort=&type=allColin made a google sheet back in the days at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b1D9fEqRh5lZ8cqMJtYoc_25rfTRvsuJkTtS2vjgi3o/edit?gid=0#gid=0 but it might be outdated. I lost track about the status of not yet completed projects.2. Is there any better way of integrating recent JavaScript libraries other than manually writing my own Elemental2 wrappers? I know Elemental2 bindings are auto-generated from Closure, so I'm hoping that there may be some tools that could generate them at least from TypeScript as well. Not that there were not efforts [5]. My prototype would have to work with maps and although I see that gwt-ol [6] is still maintained, I'm wondering what would be my options if I have to integrate with, for example, Windy API?Personally I just write JsInterop by hand because most of the time you don't need 100% of the API of a third party JS library. Generated code can also be a bit clunky as seen in elemental2 . Beside the generator you mentioned I don't know any other TS -> JsInterop generator. The one of Google is Closure externs -> JsInterop.3. J2CL seems to remain Google's internal toy, right?Well you can use it but personally I think you are right, it won't be very popular outside google.-- J.
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