| Google WTK |  |
Google Web Toolkit (GWT) in the Klixo CMS
I've been looking into the Google Web Toolkit for use on the Klixo website as well as our customers' websites recently to determine if it will benefit us. There are many problems with implementing cross-browser support at all levels - HTML, CSS and JavaScript are the main components of a web page that are browser dependant and this is of course a major discussion topic for web developers. This particular post is concerned with the JavaScript (or ECMAScript) aspects, particularly of the Klixo CMS front-end. The Klixo content management system is based on XML retrieval and XSL transforms to publish web pages and in that respect is (quite astonishingly to me) still, pretty unique.
We have used the fabulous open-source code available on SourceForge.net called Sarissa for several years and it has proven very useful. The developers state that 'Sarissa is an ECMAScript library acting as a cross-browser wrapper for native XML APIs'. It's been around for many years and is the essence of AJAX. This has enabled us to provide an enhanced editor for our customers' as you would expect of any application that really needs AJAX. But from my initial dips into the GWT I have found that they have completely surpassed this and built an all-encompassing development platform for *all* cross-browser JavaScript.
Because it's a Google app and we know they'll stay around and support it, I think we'll embrace it. The next time someone produces a major browser release that changes things (have there been any this year? er....IE8, Fx3, Chrome) we'll simply recompile our code to support the new browsers without all the effort of looking into exactly what has changed. Thank you very much Google.
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