Wicket – Tired of Spring MVC/WebFlow, JSP or JSF?

Wicket is a GUI framework recently promoted to a top level apache project. I’ve only studied it through it’s apache pages and look at code examples. But I do hope to try it out in a project.

Spring MVC has state issues, WebFlow is xml-programming and JSP messes up the html for our designers. This one of more things Wicket claims to differentiate upon. So, what’s my immediate analysis/feeling of Wicket?

pro:

• pure html/xhtml. Paradise for designers!  (The components, buttons, labels etc. are given unique ids)
• handles the state. (No more nasty HttpSession manipulation)
• no back-button issues
• more java, which is what I’m really good at
• less xml
• no jsp, only html and java (and design-stuff, whatever that is)

con:

• more java and code lines. Looks a lot like swing. You’d have to write new lots and lots of times. (Yes, I know, also listed as pro)
• uses session in the background, which might put restrictions on server capacity (I really don’t think this is a big issue at all, we tend to exaggerate this)

I think that about covers my quick analysis. Anyone have any experiences with it or don’t share my opinions, I’d like to know