Programming with the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) 2.0

February 17-19 2010, San Francisco CA

June 2-4 2010, JHU Dorsey Center, Elkridge MD

This page describes the public (open enrollment) training courses on GWT 2.0 to be held to be held February 17-19 at the Marakana Training Center in San Francisco, CA and June 2-4 at the Johns Hopkins Dorsey Center in Elkridge, MD (co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Engineering for Professionals program). The entire course is personally developed and taught by leading developer, speaker, and author Marty Hall. No contract instructor regurgitating someone else's materials! Marty has taught GWT, Ajax, and Java EE technology courses onsite for dozens of organizations in the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, all to rave reviews.

If you are looking for customized GWT, Ajax, or Java EE training courses taught on-site at your company, please see this page.

Register Early! Five of Marty's previous public short courses were full, so reserve your spot today. Registrations are taken in the order they are received.

Overview

The Google Web Toolkit is a free and open-source toolkit for building Ajax applications using Java. It is the single-most important new Ajax toolkit introduced in the last several years, but it uses a drastically different approach than the other toolkits such as jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, Dojo, Ext-JS, or YUI. As a result, it is difficult for traditional Ajax developers to understand how to use GWT effectively. Furthermore, GWT 2.0 introduced many changes and new features, so even programmers who used previous GWT releases need a fast-moving primer to get them up to speed with GWT 2.0. This course provides a practical, hands-on introduction to building Ajax-enabled applications with GWT 2.0. In each section, it gives details on the most important topics, surveys more advanced or lesser-used topics, stresses best practices, and gives plenty of working examples.

Marty normally runs on-site GWT, Ajax, and Java EE training courses at customer locations. This is easier administratively, is better for clients since the topics can be customized, and is more cost effective for students since no travel is required. However, due to demand from those who do not have enough students for an on-site course, Marty will be running public (open enrollment) GWT training courses February 17-19 in San Francisco CA and June 2-4 in Elkridge MD.

The course is developed and taught by Marty Hall, an experienced developer, award-winning instructor, popular conference speaker (5 times at JavaOne), and author of several popular Java EE books.

Venues

The west coast version of the course will be held at the Marakana Training Center in San Francisco, California. This is a modern, comfortable venue with separate computers for each student, fast internet connections, and with coffee, snacks, and meals included. For northern California residents, the location is easily accessible by driving (free parking!) or mass transit. For out-of-town students, there are many nearby hotels and we provide free taxi vouchers for going between the hotel and the training center.

The east coast version of the course will be held at the Johns Hopkins Dorsey Center in Elkridge, Maryland. This is also a modern, comfortable venue with separate computers for each student, fast internet connections, and with coffee, snacks, and meals included. For Maryland residents, the location is centrally located 5 minutes from BWI airport and has plenty of free parking. For out-of-town students, there are many hotels within 1 mile.

Registration

The three-day course costs $1595 per student and includes an extensive course notebook, a commercial textbook, exercises, exercise solutions, breakfast, snacks, and lunch. Compare this price to courses from Sun, Learning Tree, GlobalKnowledge, and Oracle University that typically cost 20% and do not include textbooks or meals. Besides, those courses almost always use an unknown instructor who did not develop the course materials and often lacks significant real-world development experience.

To register, fill out and send in the course registration form. Space is limited: five previous offerings of coreservlets.com courses were full. Bonus: Register at least a week in advance and get a $50 gift certificate from amazon.com.

Prerequisites

The course consists of an approximately equal mixture of lecture and hands-on lab time and assumes that all students have strong Java skills. It does not assume any previous exposure to GWT or Ajax, nor does it presume JavaScript knowledge.

More Information

Syllabus

The course stresses hands-on development. There will be three or four topics per day, presented in lecture/lab format, with the time about evenly split between the lectures and the hands-on exercises. Also, please note the prerequisites above, where students are assumed to already have moderate-to-strong Java skills.

• GWT Overview: Overview, Pros/Cons, Installation, Setup
• GWT Basics: Building and Deploying Apps, Basic Structure
• Widget Event Handling
• Accessing Server Data with GWT RPC
• Advanced RPC and Server Data Handling
• Laying Out Windows with Panels
• GWT Widgets
• Third-Party Widget Libaries
• Wrapping Existing JavaScript Libraries with JSNI