I wasn't aware of anyone using GWT outside of Google. Prototype.js + Scriptaculous was what really started the JS craze IMHO, followed by jQuery. Then came the increasingly more complex MooTools and YUI and Ext.js and friends, though nothing really took off nearly as hard as jQuery did. Backbone is probably also noteworthy as the bridge between jQuery spaghetti and the structured frameworks we see today (on the library consumption side). Knockout.js also deserves a shout out on the front of library authors looking for better abstractions.
A bunch of people messed with Rhino (IIRC Jaxer was one of the bigger ones), but Rhino had a bunch of quirks. For example, strings were Java strings, meaning that length is obtained via `"foo".length()` instead of `"foo".length`. Perhaps the biggest showstopper was the JVM variable limit per class file. Compiling large enough Rhino JS code would yield class files that crashed due to that limitation. And since JS didn't have modules back then, big balls of code were the norm.
Back then, the divide between frontend and backend was also wider. "Full stack" and the uplevelling of frontend folks towards backend skillsets wasn't really as popular as it is today. Node was also seen as revolutionary due to its async I/O first philosophy, whereas Rhino was more or less just a worse Java.
A bunch of people messed with Rhino (IIRC Jaxer was one of the bigger ones), but Rhino had a bunch of quirks. For example, strings were Java strings, meaning that length is obtained via `"foo".length()` instead of `"foo".length`. Perhaps the biggest showstopper was the JVM variable limit per class file. Compiling large enough Rhino JS code would yield class files that crashed due to that limitation. And since JS didn't have modules back then, big balls of code were the norm.
Back then, the divide between frontend and backend was also wider. "Full stack" and the uplevelling of frontend folks towards backend skillsets wasn't really as popular as it is today. Node was also seen as revolutionary due to its async I/O first philosophy, whereas Rhino was more or less just a worse Java.