Monday, April 30, 2012

Re: GWT Mobile App Widgets

I did a little research a while back. Here are my notes;


m-gwt
http://code.google.com/p/mgwt/
Set of mobile widgets and transitions for GWT. The widgets are quite
good and work on desktop, tablet and phones. My Android 3.1 tablet
has trouble with the history, but that is a small problem. The
library is well integrated with standard GWT. It uses CSS3
transitions and animations for efficiency. It uses separate CSS files
for each browser profile, so it is easy to use the correct sizes and
transitions based on browser type. Integrates with gwt-phonegap to
create installable applications. The associated blog is also very
informative.

There is a demo site to show how mGWT performs in mobile and desktop
browsers. It is a single site that uses different CSS to display
itself for these different form factors. mGWT performs more smoothly
than GWT Mobile, but it does not have as many widgets and features.
It works well on an Android phone, Android tablet (that is
impressive) and desktop webkit browsers. It does not work at all on
IE9 (so, more work would need to be done to create a browser profile
for IE). The history management works well in both the desktop and
mobile browsers, which is a big advantage over GWT Mobile.

GWT Designer was recently updated to support mGWT, so it is well
integrated with Google's tooling.

GWTMobile
http://code.google.com/p/gwtmobile/
GWTMobile is a framework that includes mobile UI widgets, a
persistence api and a phone-gap wrapper. The Android store has two
demo apps that can be installed.

The apps run using GWT-PhoneGap and perform pretty well on an Android
phone. I would say most of the transitions are not that good. The
mGWT transitions work much better.

There is a separate browser demo for desktop and mobile. In both
cases, the views are formatted for a phone (the desktop site runs in a
picture of a phone). The mobile demo works well on an Android phone
and feels almost identical to the demo app, except the history
management is broken. I keep hitting the back button and leaves the
demo site, which is very aggravating. Again, the transitions are
better on mGWT, but GWT Mobile has more user interface widgets.

The demo site does not run on IE.

CAVEAT: I have not used either of these libraries. I looked at their
demos on desktop and mobile browsers. I also downloaded the mobile
apps (both based on PhoneGap).

Ed

On Apr 30, 11:01 am, AgitoM <karel.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well the app runs fine on iPhone Safari, Google Chrome, and the
> Android Default Browser.
> However the app does not work on Firefox and Opera installations on
> the Android platform, so that could be a problem.
> So still hope someone can make a suggestion.
>
> On Apr 30, 10:53 pm, Alfredo Quiroga-Villamil <laww...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Mobile web libraries are based on webkit. Firefox is not. Mobile devices
> > use webkit. To test the app you can try to use a webkit based browser such
> > as chrome or safari. So if you are happy with that library I recommend you
> > continue using it and test it as previously mentioned.
>
> > Regards,
>
> > Alfredo
> > On Apr 30, 2012 10:35 AM, "AgitoM" <karel.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Does anyone know a decent library that contains GWT Widgets for the
> > > development of Mobile Apps in GWT?
>
> > > Over the past few days I've been experimenting with gwt-mobile-gui.
> > > Though this library is great, it doesn't appear to be working on all
> > > browsers. (or at least I can't get it to work on Firefox).
>
> > > So basically I am looking into other Libraries. Does anyone have any
> > > suggestions?
>
> > > Reason I am looking for a mobile widget library is because I am
> > > developing a mobile app. I developed a framework for a mobile app
> > > myself, and it works fine, but it looks too ugly.
> > > If no other library is available, does anyone know any tutorial of
> > > guide to how to develop nice looking GUI in GWT?
>
> > > Hope anyone can offer some advice.
>
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