I’ve just put up a demo which shows how to use GWT’s JSON support to communicate with the server. The server in this case is written in php and just exercises the Google Web API.  I’ll have the source up in a bit.

A new version of GWT Widgets is now up. It seems to have a lot of new features:

• Wrap existing HTML elements as widgets. Support for hyperlinks, images, buttons, and panels.
• Replace existing elements and widgets on the page with other widgets.
  
• PNGImage widget, with support for transparancy in IE5.5 and IE6.
  
• Color and BorderStyle constants for setting styles.
  
• ImageButton widget designed for use in tool bars.
  
• Allows for creation of buttons individually, or with the help of the ImageButtonFactory.
  

GWT 1.0.21 was released yesterday. You can find the details of what’s changed on the Google Web Toolkit Blog. The main issue for me that was fixed was Issue #9157420 – Compiler reports errors for non-ASCII characters (UTF-8 not supported). I’ve just tested it and it works great. I can now get chinese text to display in my page correctly now. Also, it now looks like GWT will work on IE7, although I can’t test it since I’ve already uninstalled it because of that very issue.

They’ve also put up a new issue tracker page so you can keep track of the latest bugs and features.