For context: I'm currently looking at moving my long awaited site www.playmyvenue.com from Struts2 to GWT, primarily due to the fact that I'm wanting to deploy to Google App Engine and I've hit all sorts of issues with the Struts2/GAE combo which I'm not in the mood to solve today.
Without doubt GWT is a very cool piece of kit, allowing me to create screens easily without having to switch to framework specific jsps or embed hardcoded html in servlets, but whilst viewing my amazing automagically created AJAX pages I felt somewhat uneasy; you guessed it, “am I using a website or a webapp?” Looking at my site it actually felt a little, dare I say it, amateurish having all these page updates and data forms flying around the screen, almost unnerving quickly, and I wondered if it was because I was missing the one thing that, perhaps, separates the website user experience from the webapp; page refreshes.
Take a look at “sites” like Twitter or eBay compared to your online banking or Email accounts. You feel like you’re moving AROUND the site, it’s a place with various areas of interest you peruse and occasionally interact with. Your online banking, email account, office suite, etc all demand constant interaction from you. It’s a subtle distinction but non the less profound. The mechanism for interaction is the same but the user experience and expectations are totally different. When using a traditional desktop app you expect desktop performance and as such web based alternatives must strive to provide the same levels of experience. Websites however have always behaved in this manner and we’re familiar with it. Sure connections are now faster and browsers more powerful but the underlying HCI experience hasn’t changed much, which I believe is the reason I’m not comfortable using a website written in GWT.
Unlike most blogs I read I don’t believe I have the answer the question I’m posing and I’d love to hear other peoples views on this subject.
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