The new roadmap for GWT 1.4 is pretty impressive. And it should also be noted that many more very useful things are underway in GWT land, that are not in the 1.4 plan, such as data binding, drag and drop (which many third party widgets already support very well), and Java 1.5 support.

The 1.4 roadmap is taken from http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/wiki/DevPlan_1_4

GWT Version 1.4 Development Plan

Target Availability of RC: 2007-02-21

Widgets/Library

• RichText (with spell check scaffolding)
• CollapsiblePanel
• Widgets in Tabs
• Splitter (horizontal and vertical)
• ClippedImage
• SuggestBox
• DeferredIterator
• (needed for RichText)
• ColorPicker
• ToggleButton
• DropDownToggleButton
• DateFormatter
• NumberFormatter
• DateParser
• NumberParser

Development/Deployment

• True JS output (litmus test: mash-up-able)
• Benchmarking subsystem integrated into JUnit
• Simplified external script inclusion (script ready-functions no longer necessary)
• GWTShellServlet uses preferred HTTP headers to speed demos and educate for deployment
• New JRE class: LinkedHashMap, ListIterator, TreeMap, SortedMap
• Compiler reports file/line information on internal compiler errors (ICEs)
• Automatic PNG transparency support in IE for ClippedImage
• RemoteServiceServlet refactoring to be pluggable
• Hosted mode checks at JSNI boundaries

Performance

• Compiler does simple inlining (e.g. localized Constants)
• Compiler does additional low-hanging-fruit dead code elimination
• Compiler does peephole JS output optimizations
• Optimized bootstrap, with simplified host page inclusion mechanism (i.e. <script src="module.js">)
• JRE size and speed optimizations: HashMap, ArrayList, !Vector, HashMap, HashSet
• ImageBundle generator

Fixes

• Hosted mode Linux crash
• Redundant image loading in IE
• Trees in ScrollPanel (?)
• HTMLTable bugs (already in code review)
• ...Other bugs during a 3-4 day GWT bugfix...