GWT Beta Version 1.1

Well, Google Web Toolkit beta version 1.1 has been released. On July 21st they said that the next release will have:

• Localization Easily localize strings and formatted messages
• XML classes An XML library based on the W3C DOM
• JSON classes JSON is moving into gwt-user.jar, and it's much faster than the sample in 1.0.21
• FileUpload widget The much-requested file upload widget
• FormPanel widget Easily submit traditional HTML forms from GWT apps
• RPC optimizations Speed improvements and a more compact wire format
• JUnit enhancements Unit tests are much, much faster than in 1.0.21, and you can now test asynchronous things like RPCs and timers

Also, annouced that Maven is used for the building process. More features in current release:

• Automatic resource injection Modules can contain references to external JavaScript and CSS files, causing them to be automatically loaded when the module itself is loaded.
• gwt-servlet.jar Deploy this jar to add RPC to your servlet-based webapps without having to manually crack open gwt-user.jar to remove the servlet API classes.
• Javadoc-style API documentation By popular demand :-)
• An automatic mechanism to stop the browser from caching the .nocache.html file for your module.

I'm still waiting for a large scale app, built with GWT.

Phalanger - PHP Compiler for .NET

The original description is:

The Phalanger is a complex solution giving web-application developers the ability to benefit from both the ease-of-use and effectiveness of the PHP language and the power and richness of the .NET platform. This solution enables developers to painlessly deploy and run existing PHP code on an ASP.NET web server and develop cross-platform extensions to such code taking profit from the best from both sides. Compatible with PHP 5.0, the object model in Phalanger enables to combine PHP objects with the .NET ones. It is possible to use a class written in PHP from a .NET application or even to import a .NET class (written for example in C# or Visual Basic .NET) into PHP scripts provided that this class respects the PHP object model implemented in the Phalanger. The Phalanger is the only existing PHP compiler which produces .NET Framework MSIL bytecode.

Some benchmarks were posted on the website with Phalanger 1.0 Beta 3, PHP 4.3.11, and PHP 5.0.4 with and without Zend Optimizer, and some php based popular apps: Nuke and phpBB compared. The tests were done on a Windows machine. Anyway, looking at the benchmarks Roadsend seems interesting too. The idea is that PHP for .NET is a viable solution, and compiled php is an improvment.