Portlets and AJAX: ZK, GWT, DOJO

I've tried to leverage ZK in a portal environment. Yes, it's possible, but there can be only one ZK portlet within portal's page becouse ZK uses global javascript variables. So it's sux. Anyway, don't try to use DhtmlPortlet otherwise you will end up with exception from tomcat telling about SRV spec violations. Instead, just include zk page from your custom portlet class.

The same is about GWT. It's pain to build a GWT project with maven. GWT plugin for maven looks immature and abandoned. The idea behind GWT is very hackish.

DOJO is a lowlevel set of javascript functions. That makes possible to implement custom widgets suitable for portal environment. Besides, there is DIJIT widgets collection built on top of DOJO. Injection of dijit css styles to portat theme is required to start using DIJIT widgets. Lack of real documentation for DOJO/DIJIT is the only thing really disappointing.