Brief Notes on Java Server Faces Technology (JSF) - JSR 172

JSF (Java Server Faces) brings applet functionality to the web on any browser with pure HTML & CSS based rendering. Applets not only provide rich set of UI components (much of which is yet to be replicated in JSF), it also provides a powerful event-driven model. Event driven model is the immediate value of JSF.

JSF is a promise, much needs to be implemented yet. However as it is it is very useful and deployable.

JSF takes care of maintaining states and re-populating component data manually. Using an IDE like Java Studio Creator you will feel like you are developing a standard desktop application. You are not bothered anymore about GET and POST, not about processing request parameters etc.

AJAX integration, especially for “immediate” event handling, will give it a significant performance boost. I believe work is in progress in this area. It also takes care of an architectural concern I had earlier wrt. performance. Also some events processing can be and should be delegated to JavaScript. At the end of the day we want a high runtime performance point-and-click web application development environment without having to bother ourselves with optimization and other nitty-gritty details like JavaScript or Ajax. That should be taken care in the background.

Page navigation is simplified by using an IDE. You don’t have to mess with xml files, though they are generated in the background.

The best part if that now you are again developing standard Java software, yet it is deployed as a web application. It maintains a clean separation of Model and View.

As mentioned before several custom UI components needs to be added.

I think you should definitely consider using JSF for your next project. However do so with an IDE.

Normally I don’t recommend any IDE due to their limiting nature. But as far as JSF is concerned an IDE is your best friend, at least to start with. I am using Java Studio Creator. The code generated is very clean and maintainable.

There are still few places where I would prefer plain JSP (with custom tags) for an web application.

Overall I think JSF is the future for developing (most) Web Applications. The current issues and requirements can be easily addressed within the JSF framework. It has strong vendor support through JCP process. It is the right step forward.