JWt (Java web toolkit)

JWt (pronounced "jay-witty") is an open source widget-centric web application framework for the Java programming language developed by Emweb. It has an API that uses established GUI application development patterns. The programming model is component-based and event-driven, similar to Swing.

Contents

• Major features
• Code example
• References

The goal of the library is to benefit from the stateful component model used in desktop applications APIs, applied to web development, instead of the traditional model–view–controller (MVC) model. Rather than using MVC at the level of a page, MVC is pushed to the level of individual components.

While the library uses a desktop application development model, it does support web-specific features including semantic URLs, browser history navigation support, internationalization, themes and styling, ...

A unique feature of the library is its abstraction layer of the browser rendering model. The library uses Ajax for communicating with Ajax-capable browsers, while using plain HTML form post-backs for other user agents (for accessibility and search engines). Using a progressive bootstrap method, the user interface is initially rendered as plain HTML, and for Ajax-capable browsers, it is automatically upgraded to use Ajax for increased interactivity. In this way, it is the only server-side framework that implements progressive enhancement automatically, and the only Ajax framework with search engine optimization (SEO) qualities.

JWt is distributed as a jar file. A JWt application is a war file that is deployed in a standards-compliant servlet container.