I plan on doing a major overhaul to our “knowledge intensive” cooking and recipes web portal including AJAX support and a better artificial intelligence recipe wizard. The portal is written in Java using JSPs and custom tag libraries.

I have actually considered re-writing the whole thing in Ruby Rails, partially for the AJAX support and partially because Rails is easier to develop with. However, after spending a few hours experimenting with the IntelliJ 6 Google Web Toolkit (GWT) plugin and wizard support, a lot of the advantage of Rail’s excellent AJAX support is minimized. Both free developers from most Javascript hassles of using AJAX.

The is a short flash demo that is worthwhile watching if you are considering using GWT.