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title: Overview
order: 1
layout: page
---

[[clientside.overview]]
= Overview

As noted in the introduction, Vaadin supports two development models:
server-side and client-side. Client-side Vaadin code is executed in the web
browser as JavaScript code. The code is written in Java, like all Vaadin code,
and then compiled to JavaScript with the __Vaadin Client Compiler__. You can
develop client-side widgets and integrate them with server-side counterpart
components to allow using them in server-side Vaadin applications. That is how
the components in the server-side framework and in most add-ons are done.
Alternatively, you can create pure client-side GWT applications, which you can
simply load in the browser from an HTML page and use even without server-side
connectivity.

The client-side framework is based on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), with added
features and bug fixes. Vaadin is compatible with GWT to the extent of the basic
GWT feature set. Vaadin Ltd is a member of the GWT Steering Committee, working
on the future direction of GWT together with Google and other supporters of GWT.


[NOTE]
.Widgets and Components
====
((("widget,
definition")))
Google Web Toolkit uses the term __widget__ for user interface components. In
this book, we use the term widget to refer to client-side components, while
using the term __component__ in a general sense and also in the special sense
for server-side components.

====



The main idea in server-side Vaadin development is to render the server-side
components in the browser with the Client-Side Engine. The engine is essentially
a set of widgets paired with __connectors__ that serialize their state and
events with the server-side counterpart components. The client-side engine is
technically called a __widget set__, to describe the fact that it mostly
consists of widgets and that widget sets can be combined, as described later.