I predict that those web applications that weren't possible before will all use straight JavaScript, and GWT will be relegated to the dustbin of ideas that were too early to change the game.

I predict as web applications get increasingly complicated, javascript will be viewed as more of a low-level language which will be compiled down to from higher level abstractions. Not because javascript is a bad language, but because browser fragmentation is so bad. It may not just be Java (in the form of GWT), but other languages as well.

Google has actually been doing this for a while now, even before GWT. Much of the javascript that is used in their apps is generated via compiler in one form or another.

Browser problems really aren't that bad if you use a cross-platform JavaScript library. The core language behaves basically the same in all browsers (except for the trailing-commas issue in IE), it's just the DOM and event-handling models that are a mess.

Those "cross-platform" libraries aren't:

- Faster - Slimmer - Better

compare to GWT.

GWT applications ARE straight javascript. It's how you create and maintain those humongous javascript applications that is the question. And GWT is a killer answer.