WidgetServer is a component based, server-side, Java/XML rich-client-framework which enables an application to run as either

- as an application with a rich Web client based on AJAX (HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript)
- as an application with a simple Web client based on HTML and CSS
- a standalone application with a Swing GUI,
- a client/server application with a thin Swing client,
- or as a mobile application on different devices like PDAs or Smartphones

without any change and without loss of functionality!
WidgetServer gives you the choice if you develop a GUI either using

- HTML markup,
- a Java API like Swing,
- or XML markup.

WidgetServer provides a unified component-based, object-oriented programming interface for Web and Swing GUIs to control and modify the GUI and to process events. The framework prevents from struggling with HTML, JavaScript and HTTP requests or from caring about the internals of Swing (e.g. Drag and Drop implementation). For Swing client/server applications the framework cares for the client/server split as well as for the client/server communication including compression and security layers. Web applications are completely AJAX enabled, while the use of this feature remains fully configurable. The framework also supports a mixed deployment mode, which enables one server to serve Swing clients and Web clients at the same time. The functionality of the Swing widget set is covered widely (and sometimes enhanced) in both (Swing and Web/HTML) client channels.
The framework also covers areas of data-binding, persitence, threading and synchronisation.
The project comes with a WYSIWYG GUI-builder which is completely built on the WidgetServer framework technology. An eclipse-plugin has been released.