Google has announced Google Web Toolkit 2.0, an open source development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. Features new to Google Web Toolkit 2.0 include:

• Speed Tracer is a new tool built using modern HTML5 technologies that allows developers to diagnose performance problems in the browser, providing insight that hasn't been available before about low-level operations deep within the browser.
• As applications grow larger, developers want to ensure that their applications start as quickly as possible, without requiring application "boot up" time as the code downloads. Code Splitting enables developers to safely and easily slice and dice their application code so that key functionality can load immediately and other features can be loaded later as needed.
• Team projects benefit from a workflow that allows smooth collaboration between designers and developers. UiBinder is a new declarative UI framework in Google Web Toolkit which enables rapid design iteration and a clean separation between presentation layer and application logic.

"The web is getting more powerful as an application platform and ever improving developer tools are playing a key role in this growth," said Google's Andrew Bowers. "Google Web Toolkit's performance and productivity enhancements have been tried and tested over the past year with Google teams that are pushing the boundaries of web apps -- products like Google Wave and AdWords 3.0."

Ben Fried, Google CIO, added that "we use Google Web Toolkit for all our Java-based internal apps. We build our most sensitive and critical corporate systems with it. In addition to the big benefits in developer productivity GWT offers, the future-proofing and browser independence you get out of the box mean that we're protected from the problems caused by browser-specific bugs and exploits." .