GWT Drag and Drop

We’re in the process of removing GWT-EXT from our app due to a large download overhead with the extjs javascript file. One of things we use is the portal drag and drop stuff… however there’s an excellent library written by Fred Sauer called GWT-DND that does a much better job. It also has a pretty simple API. The compiled GWT javascript is tiny ~9k!

Brilliant!

GWT Tools, Geez and GStyle.

I’m loving developing web applications in GWT at the moment – it’s great being back in the Java world, rather than XML / HTML / Javascript / whatever.

There’s a few things that annoy me, the widgets in GWT don’t easily allow you set an id on them, which means when it comes to testing, Selenium etc. has difficulty. So I’ve started a project called Geez that aims to add a bit more of a fluent way of building GWT apps… find it here:

http://code.google.com/p/geez/

Another thing that annoys me is still having to write style sheets for the application, and having to integrate these using string names as per defined in the style sheet. Browser incompatibilities annoy me, as GWT has abstracted away all the Javascript incompatibilities, I do wonder why they didn’t do CSS at the same time. Anyway, here’s another project I’ve started to address this:

http://code.google.com/p/gstyle4gwt/

Please note, they are very young, and I haven’t spent lots of time on them yet – so don’t whinge too much! That said, I’m more than happy for people to contribute ideas, code, tea – anything, just ping me.

Good cop, bad cop… in the pairing world

I had an interesting discussion with someone I work with over pairing sessions today, and I was very impressed with his conclusion. This was, albeit subtle – ‘there are some people that you pair with, where the best of both of you come out in the code, and there are others, where the worst of both of you come out in the code’.

Too true… there are definite boundaries when pairing, and allowing your pair to explore the code within those boundaries, before reeling them in, is a good thing. However it is definitely down to the pair as to where those boundaries lie. Sometimes there may be no scope for allowing debt / poor quality code in, and in others, it may be acceptable as the pair trusts itself to go back and fix the poor quality code before (or immediately after) checking in.