Back in August Google acquired Instantiations, the developer of a suite of popular development tools focused on Google’s Google Web Toolkit, a Java development environment that makes it easier to build AJAXy applications. The most well-known of these tools is GWT Designer — a powerful plugin for Eclipse that allows developers to visualize their programs. Before the acquisition GWT Designer and Instantiation’s other programs used to cost hundreds of dollars. Today, Google is releasing them for free.

It’s not a surprising move, but it will sure make GWT developers happy: they’ll save hundreds of dollars, and the apps will now be prominently featured on GWT’s home page so developers who may not have been aware of them before will see them.

Here’s an outline of what each product does, from Google’s GWT blog:

 GWT Designer
    A powerful set of Eclipse-based development tools that enables Java developers to quickly create user interfaces for AJAX/rich internet applications using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

CodePro AnalytiX
    A comprehensive automated software code quality and security analysis toolkit to improve software quality, reliability, and maintainability in developer applications.

WindowBuilder Pro
    Java graphical user interface designer for Swing, SWT, RCP, XWT and GWT UI framework.

WindowTester Pro
    Test GUI interactions within Java client rich applications for the SWT and Swing UI frameworks .