Posts Tagged ‘gwt’

Google Developer Day London

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

falling through the floorIt’s been a very geeky week – only a couple of days after BathCamp, I was in London yesterday for Google Developer Day.

I was saying only a couple of days ago that I really need to get my head around some of the options out there for web developers, so this was well timed.

I learnt about web development tools and online APIs, talked a lot about where mobile development is going, and got to wander around Wembley Stadium. All in all, it was a good day. 🙂

ooh - a present!The underlying theme for the talks throughout the day was showing how Google are trying to make the web ‘better’.

The messages were grouped into four key areas:

  • “client” – making the browser more powerful – through Chrome, and Gears
  • “cloud” – making the cloud more powerful – through the various APIs they make available
  • “connectivity” – making web apps more powerful – through web development tools like GWT, and Android for mobile
  • “social” web – making the web more social – through OpenSocial

I made a ton of notes throughout the day. Rather than write the world’s longest blog post, I’ve picked out a few interesting bits.

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But, I like transcoding!

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

screenshot - Image Hosted by ImageShack.usMobile transcoding – services which turn a webpage into something better suited for a mobile web browser – is an often contentious topic. It’s a topic which has come up several times recently, and at best people will begrudgingly describe it as a necessary temporary evil.

Don’t get me wrong – it hasn’t been without problems. It has been used in inappropriate ways, and I know web-developers whose sites have been broken by poor (and inflicted!) uses of mobile transcoding.

But as a practical, day-to-day tool – I kinda like it.

I started using Google’s transcoder (GWT) because when you use the mobile version of Google’s RSS reader, any links you click on are transcoded by GWT for you. And I find it very useful.

It creates efficient pages which render well in Pocket Internet Explorer. Plus it stops my phone trying to download some ridiculously large webpages over GPRS (argh… curse web-developers who have 1MB webpages on the front of your sites!).

It also adds a link to any RSS feeds it finds in a page at the top – clicking on which will take you to the feed in Google Reader (my RSS reader of choice at the moment), from where you can subscribe to the feed. (Slightly roundabout, but the only way I know to subscribe to new feeds from Google Reader Mobile).

I like.

But it’s a bit of a faff getting a page transcoded by GWT if you aren’t already given a link to a transcoded page. So (in the tiny window between tonight’s screaming fits… gah – when will the baby start sleeping through the night?!) I added a new tool to my set of Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) extensions: one that will re-open the current page using Google mobile transcoder.

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