The examples are thorough and come with loads of readable code listings. In addition, many complex topics were further clarified with a good use of graphics.
— Lasse Koskela, JavaRanch Sheriff
Book Description
Pro JSF and Ajax shows you how to leverage the full potential of JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Ajax. This is not an entry-level tutorial, but a book about building Ajax-enabled JSF components for sophisticated, enterprise-level Rich Internet Applications. Written by JSF experts and verified by established community figuresincluding Adam Winer (member of the JSF Expert Group, Java Champion), Kito D. Mann (JSFCentral.com and JSF in Action), and Matthias Weßendorf (MyFaces)this JSF 1.2-compatible book provides reliable and groundbreaking JSF components to help you exploit the power of JSF in your Java web applications.
This book provides a blueprint for building custom JSF UI components and shows how to leverage the best browser technologies, such as AJAX, Mozilla XUL and
Microsoft HTC, to deliver Rich Internet Applications.
This book covers standard best practices for behavioral and renderer-specific component classes, renderers, events and event listeners, and JSP tag handlers for each. It also covers advanced techniques such as dynamic content type negotiation, JAR-based resource delivery, and dynamic render kit selection.
Foreword
"Does the world really and truly need another JavaServer Faces book?
I was fairly well convinced the answer could only be a resounding 'no'! After all, there's a good half dozen books out in stores today, by a whole host of web luminaries, and I've even personally helped as a technical reviewer on half of those. So what more could really be said on the subject?
But when I thought about this a bit more, it became clear that all of these books only go so far. They'll show you how to use what JSF gives you out of the box, throw you a bone for writing your own components and renderers, maybe even a bit more. But none that I've seen get to the heart of why JSF is really and truly cool and important technology; they make JSF look like YAMVCF (Yet Another Model-View-Controller Framework) for HTML - more powerful here and there, easier to use in many places, a bit harder to use in others, but really nothing major. And certainly nothing that takes us beyond the dull basics of building ordinary-looking web applications.
This book goes a lot further. It'll cover the basics, of course, and show you how to build components, but then it keeps going: on to AJAX, on to HTC, on to XUL - and how you can wrap this alphabet soup up underneath the heart of JSF, its component model, and how you can leverage it to finally develop web applications that don't need radical re-architecting every time the winds of client technologies blow in a different direction. Along the way, you'll learn a wide array of open source toolkits that make web magic practical even when you're not a Javascript guru.
So, heck, I'm convinced. The world does need another JSF book."
Adam Winer,
Architect ADF Faces, JSF Expert Group Member, and Java Champion. (From the Foreword)
About The Author
John R. Fallows is a JavaServer Faces technology architect at Oracle. Originally from Northern Ireland, John graduated from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and has worked in the
software industry for more than ten years. Prior to joining Oracle, John worked as a research scientist for British Telecommunications Plc.
For the past four years, John has played a leading role in the Oracle ADF Faces team to influence the architecture of the JavaServer Faces standard and to extend the standard to provide Ajax functionality in the ADF Faces project.
Jonas Jacobi is a J2EE and open source evangelist at Oracle. A native of Sweden, Jonas has worked in the
software industry for more than fifteen years. Prior to joining Oracle, Jonas worked at several major Swedish
software companies in management, consulting, development, and project management roles.
For the past three years, Jonas has been responsible for the product management of JavaServer Faces, Oracle ADF Faces, and Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client in the Oracle JDeveloper team.
Reader ReviewsThe first round of books on JSF were survey books that attempt to cover all of this complex, sophisticated framework. Pro JSF and Ajax focuses on one important facet of JSF -- component development -- and does it well. It starts with a quick overview of the major architectural elements of JSF, and then quickly moves to building custom components in Chapter 2. The first component built is a simple date entry component; a second, more sophisticated example is a 'deck' implementation (a deck is a collapsing navigational/browsing UI element). The authors then provide a succinct overview of client side rich internet technologies -- Ajax, XUL (supported by Firefox) and HTC (the DHTML behavior language that is supported by Internet Explorer). They then deploy these technologies to build rich client versions of the date and deck components. The book does a good job of bridging the gap between JSF 1.1 and 1.2 implementations; the code in the book targets 1.1, but discusses how implementation would differ in 1.2. For someone starting out developing in JSF, I'd recommend this book in combination with the strong survey of JSF in JavaServer Faces by Hans Bergsten.
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