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Speed Tracer: Google announces new tools and more thanks to the GWT team
Author: Dion Almaer9 Dec
Here is Speed Tracer, the new tool to aid us Web developers in our quest for great applications:
Ben and I are at Google Campfire One with a Who's Who from the Web developer space. When I first met the GWT team they were talking about revolutionary new Web tools that they wanted to create, and I have a feeling that they will be talking about what they have come up with.
David Glazer (Engineering Director) and Andrew Bowers (GWT PM) are kicking off the build up with the obligatory ra-ra for HTML5 and the great new browsers we have to build "modern Web applications".
Next, Andrew gets into the world of development and deployment of Web apps and the productivity and performance improvements.
First up, productivity. Andrew is discussing AdWords which uses GWT in places. AdWords uses a UiBinder a declarative approach to building GUIs:
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<ui :UiBinder ... ugly xml ns ...>
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<ui :style/>
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<g :HTMLPanel>
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... insert HTML or widgets ...
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<div ....>
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<g :Button ui:field="closeWidget">Close</g>
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</div>
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</g>
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</ui>
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AboutDialog.java:
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@UiHandler("closeWidget")
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void onClick(ClickEvent e) {
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hide();
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}
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After the demo he talks about the Developer Plugin and support for multiple browsers.
Matt Mastracci, founder of Dotspots, is now "by the fire" ready to talk to us about how they use GWT. First up he shows a GWT application that compiles down and uses it as a Firefox add-on. They have also used the same code that they incorporate in a Chrome Extension and other areas. GWT 2.0 contains a new "developer mode" and Matt shows it in action as he hits Eclipse from the browser to quickly iterate. No need to recompile.... (since GWT is a compiler). Of course, using JS itself allows you to make a change and reload :)
Bruce Johnson, co-creator of GWT, is now "fired up" to talk about the deployment stage. How does the GWT compiler do its job? It can Prune dead code, Devirtualize, Inline, Eval, and Obfuscate.
Developer guided code splitting is next up which cuts down the initial download and only grabs what it needs.
Someone from MediaBeacon shows a rich app (which looks exactly like how I envision a GWT app ;) as a demo of code splitting.... going from 1.5MB to 100k in 16 lines of code.
Now Kelly Norton (awesome guy) is up on stage with a "Web Workers" ice hockey jersey. He has the new tool, Speed Tracer! It monitors apps in real time, shows hidden browser events, and gives advice through hints.
Kelly has fired up Google Calendar to show a demo. I love the "Sluggishness" activity bar showing work in real time. The graph view is nice, and seeing the events is fantastic. E.g. script eval, script parse, paints, parse HTML, DOM layout, CSS style calculation. You can see it!
Speed Tracer itself is a Web application deployed as a Chrome Extension. One nice feature is that you can export a trace and send it over to someone via email and they can manipulate and play with the view on that data. It is a GWT app itself, and it looks not-like you think of a GWT app. Very nice indeed.
That's a wrap, thanks for the new tool Kelly, Bruce, Andrew and team!
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