If you use your own serever (as you should, as Jens pointed out), you can hot reload your backend code like you can with any other project. Eg: IntelliJ supports "Compile and Reload Modified Files", and I think Eclipse can be set to just reload automatically on save. My server starts up in a few seconds, so I rarely bother with this, I just restart it, but handy if you need it.
> Can I use HTML/CSS? If so, are there examples?
As Jens pointed out, the GWT UIBinder is fantastic. Apart from a few TextBoxes and things like that, most of my project is pure HTML + CSS.
> Is there a graphical GUI system that allows someone to graphically design an interface and have it generate all of that Java code for the front-end?
It's not really needed, as no Java code is created for your layouts when using the UIBinder, just HTML + CSS (FlexBox is awesome).
The main pain point I found is integrating HTML widget events into GWT, but Elemental2 solved a lot of that.
On Monday, 16 February 2026 at 3:38:26 am UTC+11 Jens wrote:
I noticed that you can change front-end code without rebooting the system and rebuilding. However, this doesn't seem true about the back-end code. Am I missing something?Going forward GWT will only provide a simple server to serve static files out of the box. If you want DevMode to launch an application server for your server side code you have to use "-server com.google.gwt.dev.shell.JettyLauncher" to get the implementation GWT had always provided (but it will be removed in a future release) or provide your own implementation of GWTs "ServletContainerLauncher". If you use a proper build tool with separated modules for GWT code and for server code you usually already have some mechanism to launch your app server. Also the coupling GWT did before always produced classpath issues.So going forward it is up to the developer to serve the backend code.Also, since I originally used GWT, I have learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. Now I feel like it is easier to specify layout in HTML/CSS than using all of that GWT Java code. GWT front-end code seems incredibly verbose. That leads me to two questions:1. Can I use HTML/CSS? If so, are there examples?GWT SDK provides UiBinder which allows you to write XML documents with a matching Java class and GWT will generate an additional Java class from the XML document to glue both together, see: https://www.gwtproject.org/doc/latest/DevGuideUiBinder.htmlIt is still a bit verbose compared to JS frameworks which support two way databinding and plain HTML but it is good enough if you like to read HTML instead of code.2. Is there a graphical GUI system that allows someone to graphically design an interface and have it generate all of that Java code for the front-end?There was an Eclipse plugin called GWT Designer, but I think it does not work anymore. I am not aware of anything else. Your best bet is probably using UiBinder XML and some AI help.Lastly, and just FYI, in response to what Google did with GWT at that time, I ended up writing my own open-source, full-stack web development framework. In addition to being able to change front-end code while developing, it also supports changing back-end code without having to reboot the server or recompile anything. It also has built-in support for microservices, REST (actually JSON-RPC), authentication, custom HTML controls, SQL API, reporting, CSV import/export, crypto, LLM interfaces, and a lot more. It has been used in production systems for a few years now. It's at kissweb.orgSounds interesting.For GWT related libraries you can take a look at https://github.com/gwtboot/gwt-boot-awesome-lili-- J.
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