Today, just met an amazing developer. Honestly, I did not really think I will meet someone of that caliber in a country like Pakistan. I mean… my intention of coming to customer was to find labour to handle simple projects.
Never did I expect to chance upon another AJAX genius – somewhat like the Chuen Yang I knew. Well, the guy built up a full scale AJAX desktop environment complete with windowing features, etc. It looked just like Google Ajax API… just that it was custom made… and they did it on PHP.
I looked at the application and it was cool. Honestly, if someone told me about this a few weeks ago, I will think the project will be pure stupidity. I mean… why go through all the effort to build all the AJAX controls when google has already done it for you? In GTW, you can practically, create windows, dialogs, etc… with a few lines of codes (much like in a swing environment). For those of you who are not familiar with GWT, check out:
http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/
However, upon meeting the person itself, I must say I am quite impressed. Amazing UI, AJAX controls… with seemless integration with Json and Web Services through the use of asynchronous javascript. And all in PHP!!!!
But then again.. he secretly confided in me that he nearly went mad handling cross browser compatibility issues. 
All in all… stick with GWT I will say… But boy am I seeing potential in Pakistan….
Thanks James for your compliments. Indeed, GWT has made ajax development much more conducive for prime time. I believe http://www.streetsine.com must be one of the first full RIA applications in Singapore that utilizes GWT. We’ve applied it to research, sale and rental of property, and even building a street directory out of it. And I believe others can use it effectively in building other kinds of e-commerce applications. One note of caution though :- RIAs are not very SEO friendly. I’m crossing my fingers that Google will eventually figure out how to index a website built using their very own framework.
Yah… this SEO thing is a problem.
Just hope that when enough people point to http://www.streetsine.com, it will progress naturally.
BTW, I think incoming links beat all the on-page optimisation anytime. I just saw a web site… flash based… and it ranked pretty high all the same.
Hope that is some encouragement!