JSF 2: Keeping Progress Coming

This presentation will provide an in-depth introduction to many of the new JSF 2.0 features and will ask of each: Is the currently specified solution sufficient? We'll also consider whether other concerns (paper cuts) have been overlooked?

The JSF 2.0 specification (JSR-314) addresses a substantial number of long standing pain points that JSF users have just come to accept as a hard knock life (or death by 1000 paper cuts). At last, JSF is a true contender amongst web frameworks. Now that the specification final, it's time to take a step back, evaluate the results and look ahead to JSF 2.1.

Here's a partial list of the features we'll be covering:

• State saving: We'll introduce the new partial state saving solution in JSF 2.0 and consider whether additional utilities are needed for stricly stateless use cases.
• GET support: At long last, JSF now supports GET request processing in the form of bookmarkable URLs and request parameter binding. But how does it measure up to frameworks that accept REST-style URLs?
• Validation: Integration with JSR-303: Bean Validation changes the data validation landscape. We'll examine how far it stretches and whether it can handle that elusive multi-component validation use case.
• Ajax: JSF 2.0 finally delivers Ajax support! We'll survey this new functionality and consider just how far it goes to allowing developers to forget about the tedium of JavaScript, and how well it accomodates custom JavaScript when it's warranted.
• Facelets: The marriage between JSF and JSP was never a good one. Facelets stood in as the surrogate view handler for JSF and arguably saved the framework. Now it's part of the specification and also got it's long overdue update. But is there still room for this templating solution to improve?

While this presentation effectively provides an overview of the JSF 2.0 specification, the underlying goal of this session is to serve as an outreach to identify outstanding recommendations for making the framework more pleasant and productive to use and to give members of the JSF community the invitation to participate in the improvement of the JSF platform. As such, attendees are encouraged to bring their own concerns and suggestions to the table.

Whether you are a new JSF user who wants to find out more about the latest developments in the specification or an old hat with an issue or two on your mind, this session has something to offer you!