|
Other Important Items
| [Previous] [Main] [Next] |
Other Important Stuff
| · | There a couple of dozen or so components (widgets) that come with JSF. The following link lists these and shows their basic code. http://www.exadel.com/tutorial/jsf/jsftags-guide.html
|
| · | There are a number of converters and validators that come standard with JSF.
|
| · | Since JSF is an extension of Servlet's and JSP, all of the Application Container filter technology that has been developed for security, code conversion, etc. still works.
|
| · | JSF is fully compatible with Cascading Style Sheets. After all the final output to the web browsers is straight HTML.
|
| · | All of the components in the Component Tree and all of the Application, Session and Request level container are available programmatically. If you need to write a custom component, validator or converter, everything on the current page is available to your code. You need to be able to do this since the backing beans do not have the current response data until AFTER the components, converters and validators have finished - see the Life Cycle.
|
| · | All of the books show you how to add custom components, custom converters and custom validators. Third parties are selling VERY fancy components to spiff up your web site.
|
| · | RenderKits - HTML is not the only thing that JSF widgets can be rendered as. The Geary and Horstmann book devotes a chapter to creating a JSF application for cell phones. They give you code for basic rendering for most of the basic components needed to create a web page on a cell phone.
|
| · | Client side validation (Jakarta Commons and Struts JavaScript can be inserted into your JSF pages. These libraries add JavaScript that does basic syntax checking of some components on the client side.
|
| · | Tiles - Tiles is part of Struts. Large web sites use Tiles to create uniform pages that have banners at the top, navigation in a set place, footers, headers and the main content of the pages. JSF runs very nicely in the Tiles environment. Again Geary/Hostmann have examples in their book.
|
| · | Internationalization (I18N) - JSF is very good at handling I18N. The one odd point is that Swing handles resource bundles with keys that have spaces. JSF does not appear to handle this.
|
| · | Accessibility (A11Y) - If you use OutputLabels and do a couple of other small things, JSF created Bobby compliant code.
|
| · | The JSF code has been released. It is not quite open-source, but it is available and you can add to it.
|
| · | There is a Technology Compatibility Kits (TCK) for JSF and the team is going to release it for all of us to use "very soon."
|
| · | There are a number of very good web sites that focus on JSF. I would start at JSFCentral.com and go from there. http://www.jsfcentral.com/reading/
|
| · |
|
| · | Tool makers are getting into JSF in a big way. Being able to drag components and click on property sheets will make much of the blood and guts covered in this presentation much easier to handle on a day to day basis.
|
| · | Java Studio Creator (Forte/NetBeans, etc.) is now very JSF centric. The new Sun book on Java Studio One shows creating and using JSF all through the book.
|
| · | There are Eclipse pluggins to do JSF
|
| · | IBM's WebSphere Application Developer (WSAD) has JSF support
|
| · | Oracle's JDeveloper will have JSF support soon.
|
| · | There are others.
|
| · | Books - there are six I can attest to first hand. JSFCentral lists a couple of more. Here is the list along with my humble opinion of each.
|
| · | JavaServer Faces in Action - Kito D. Mann- at the time this was written 11 chapters have been released. I have read several. This is a down to earth book and a good read.
|
| · | JavaServer Faces Programming - Budi Kumiawan - dated and incorrect in places. Things have changed since the initial release and this book hasn't.
|
| · | Mastering JavaServer Faces - Bill Dudney et.al. If you are already into JSP, UML, J2EE in a big way, this book may be for you. I found that it had too much emphasis on theory and theory that didn't really help. The writing style is also complex and difficult to read.
|
| · | JavaServer Faces Kickstart - James Turner - I haven't read this one either.
|
| · | Core JavaServer Faces - David Geary and Cay S. Horstmann -I found this to be the best - by far. It start with showing how to get a JSF application deployed (along with an Ant build) and builds from simple examples to more complex examples. It is logically educational. It also gives renderkits for PDAs and cell phones. The authors write in simple sen tenses so that it is easy to sit down and read this book.
|
| · | JavaServer Faces - Hans Bergsten. This is a solid book. I found it difficult to read. The author likes long complex sen tenses that you have to untangle.
|
| · | Pro JavaServer Faces: Building J2EE Applications with JSF - Kim Topley. - I haven't read this one.
|
| · | J2EE Tutorial - Sun and on the Sun Web site - don't bother. If you don't already know the information, you won't get it here.
|