Question for all the GWT gurus out there - which is the best GWT widgets library out there? And why?
List based on the answers:
И наконец- новое поколение основанное на JsInterop:
Do not bind yourself to ANY of these libraries. Use Vanilla GWT to create the structure of your project. In particular, use the MVP pattern and an Event Bus. Please, see google article to know how to best design your client application with GWT: Building MVP apps
After, you can use any widget of these libraries (say a table, or a combobox, a datepicker, etc) and incorporate it to your project. Try to use extended components ONLY if you don't see a way to do it with vanilla GWT. This way you don't tie yourself to these libraries which are ALWAYS a pain when you try to do something that doesn't appear in the demo application, contain many bugs and their support are poor at best.
How to look for widgets should follow this order:
Careful with other libraries, I've worked with them (and still have nightmares).
Google's default library is the most powerful library.
Ext GWT adds bells and whistles but apart from that it's similar to Google's.
We're currently liking the GWT Mosaic widgets. We've worked with ext-JS and we've rolled our own widgets in the past. ext-JS licensing and bulk were a problem for us. Rolling our own isn't what we want to do. Mosaic gives us a happy middle ground which we like to think will be an even happier middle ground as the project matures.
Didn't see this one mentioned, Vaadin (previously known is IT Mill Toolkit), but maybe that's because it's not technically exactly GWT; as their FAQ says:
How does this differ from GWT?
GWT applications run in the browser, while Vaadin applications run on the server. We do actually use GWT as a "rendering engine" on the browser side, so you can combine Vaadin and GWT.
smartGWT is slow and examples are lacking and it is very hard to find answers for even the basic questions, i.e. see all my non answered questions on this forum. I'm dumping smartgwt.