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Excellent review.

Looks like Vaadin will only work for intranets, anyone used it over the Internet? I don't see how it can possibly be not sluggish/unresponsive if client side events are handled in the server which could be hundreds of milliseconds (or more) away.

The demo site is also one benchmark, see it feels sluggish for you. It's hosted on Amazon EC2.
http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler

More specifically - it is hosted on US-EAST datacenter of Amazon. The fact that it works beautifully all over the world shows that when Server-side RIA framework is built well the latency not an issue.

Here is an example of public internet use: javablackbelt.com

An article by the founder of JavaBlackBelt about selecting, learning and using the framework: http://vaadin.com/blog/-/blogs/blackbeltfactory-made-with-vaadin-part-1-selection

Thanks guys, the demo stuff looks pretty snappy. I need to implement this on Google App Engine though, so am a bit worried about server round-trips (GAE tends to have hiccups with Java in my experience, at least as of today). My targets are mobile and web RIAs, and I'm currently using GWT. I will give Vaadin a spin with GAE after I break from my current project and confirm things for my situation.

BTW, the Vaadin web site and demos look fantastic - probably the best organized demos I've seen. Great job, Vaadin folks.

GAE is not a speed daemon, unfortunately. Also you should test the user experience on mobile networks (not just WLAN) to ensure that everything is good enough.

If you happen to have iPhone, iPod, iPad or an Android touch device, check out this demo: http://marcus.virtuallypreinstalled.com/TouchKit (still under construction, but impressive nevertheless)