Are there any good drag&drop web app IDEs out there that support AJAX?

Question

Can anyone recommend a GUI builder tool for creating DHTML web apps using AJAX to communicate with a web service backend? I'd like to avoid having to mess around with designing HTML, marshalling/unmarshalling data, checking for browser compatibility, etc. The tool should have a library of widgets that can be put into an application and hooked up to functionality, and be extensible enough to be able to define custom widgets. Of course free and/or open source is preferrable but I would consider proprietary tools too.

Also to what extent does the choice of GUI tool affect what platform or language I would use for the backend? If the GUI is just calling a web service then I should be able to use anything on the server-side to provide that interface but maybe some gui-side tools use a proprietary data exchange format that requires some specific server-side code?

Edit: I don't need a widget that can be dragged, I want an IDE that allows one to build a gui easily (ie a RAD tool).

Answer 1

WaveMaker是开源的，在J2EE上运行。

Answer 2

If you're comfortable with Java, maybe you could try Google Web Toolkit? http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/

Answer 3

我正在使用Wavemaker，它完全符合你的要求......它非常易于使用且性能非常好....

Answer 4

Wavemaker beats everything else I have used hands down. Applications can be developed rapidly, has drag and drop, can connect to any web service, and has unmatched database management tools. The only problem with it is that it has kept changing hands/ownership so much and its future direction is not clear.

Answer 5

I believe Dreamweaver does some of this, but in my opinion such editors are not a good idea. They produce horrible, unmaintainable server-side code and are quite inflexible.

Answer 6

Codegear的Delphi for PHP具有这方面的一些功能，但我同意ceejayoz的观点，即这些工具并不一定能提供很好的代码。

Answer 7

On Dan's suggestion I took a look at GWT. I'd heard of it before but never looked at it that closely and it seems pretty interesting. Certainly it takes away the annoyance of pixel pushing and making things work in multiple browsers. I also tried searching for "gwt rad tools" and came up with a couple of results:

• Instantiations GWT Designer (commercial, $59/year)
• Wirelexsoft Vistafei (still in beta but will have a free and a commercial version)

I'll take a look at these but if anyone's used something else let me know.