Google Offers Open Source AJAX Toolkit

Hoping to spur development of Web sites using the AJAX development platform, Google on Tuesday released the Google Web Toolkit. The offering is a software development framework that would allow developers to create Web applications much more easily. Knowledge of only the Java programming language is necessary: the GWT would convert the code to compliant JavaScript and HTML for browsers.

The project is open source, and Google is asking developers to contribute in order to improve its offerings. "We've been working hard to build great tools for AJAX development, and now we're happy to begin working with the open source community towards the same goal," product manager Dan Peterson said.