Google has just released a Web Toolkit to simplify development of cross browser AJAX applications.

The Google Web Toolkit takes a very different approach for simplifying development of AJAX applications as compared to other similar initiatives like Prototype.

For one thing, the real development happens in Java and the toolkit provides a compiler which converts that into JavaScript for deployment. The toolkit also includes a hosted web browser where you can directly test your Java code before compiling to JavaScript.

The other significant improvement in the Web Toolkit is that it creates separate JavaScript files for different classes of browsers, and on a request, only the browser specific files are served. Typically, libraries such as Prototype deal with browser quirks using conditionals embedded in the code, which inflates the code base and increases download times for Ajax applications.

The compiler also implements code obfuscation and 'crunching' to further decrease download times.

Google Web toolkit's homepage is here, and their blog can be found here.