AJAX-loving Mac folks who have been checking in on the Google Web Toolkit hoping to find a Mac download finally got their reward today: OS X support for GWT has just been added.

Kelly Norton, a GWT Engineer, has blogged about being eager to try GWT when first it was announced, only to discover that it was only available for Linux and Windows. He was, he writes, disappointed. But then came an unexpected twist...

"In a strange turn of events, as I watched GWT develop, I somehow came to work for Google ... on the GWT team, no less. So when I got the opportunity to participate in the recent addition of OS X support, I was thrilled," Norton writes, before summarizing GWT in a nutshell:

"Write your AJAX code in Java, leveraging concepts and patterns that have become very familiar to UI developers; develop using proven development environments that include good code completion and refactoring tools like Eclipse; debug your apps by running them in a real browser, using a solid debugger; then use a compiler to translate all that Java code to tiny, high-performance JavaScript that automatically works around most browser quirks without so much as a nod from the developer. And of course, make it possible to slip seamlessly into JavaScript when the need arises to do things we never even anticipated."

"OK, you have to promise not to tell our Windows and Linux users, but we were able to slip a little something extra into the OS X version. One item that has been on our nice-to-have list for some time has been a quality DOM inspector to allow developers to take a look under the hood at the dynamically created tags you find in AJAX applications. On the other platforms, it's still in the to-be-scheduled stage. But on OS X, right-clicking on the page you're debugging reveals an interesting option: "Inspect Element." Select that, and a window appears that should be familiar to you WebKit hackers. Yes, we enabled a feature that is part of WebKit but not turned on in Safari, which enables you to inspect DOM elements in the debuggable browser. But please, whatever you do, don't tell the Windows or Linux folks about it."