Kito Mann

Presentations

Exploring the JavaServer Faces Ecosystem

This session examines the ecosystem of products built on JavaServer Faces.

We start with a discussion of why JSF is significant and explain how it lays the foundation for a range of new products. We then look at the IDE offerings from major industry players, such as Sun, IBM, and Oracle. Next, we examine the products from smaller vendors and open source organizations, such as component suites and additional toolkits and frameworks, examining the specific features and benefits that these products provide. Finally, we look at other potential product opportunities and examine ways to get involved.

Simplyfing JavaServer Faces component development

The benefits of using JavaServer Faces UI components to rapidly construct complex, interactive user interfaces have become quite clear over the past couple of years. However, the standard process for developing these UI components is currently quite tedious. Fortunately, there are better solutions available.

This presentation examines techniques for easing the process of developing components with techniques such as annotations, convention over configuration, and templating. We'll examine solutions based on JSP tag files, Facelets, and Apache Shale. In addition, we will discuss how JSF 2 will simplify the process.

Scripting JavaServer Faces

With increased emphasis on scripting technologies, the Java platform is evolving to accommodate dynamic languages at all levels. While JavaServer Faces (JSF) provides a powerful UI component model, an adequate IOC framework, navigation, and several other features, it is not obvious how to build JSF applications using dynamic languages. This session examines how to integrate JSF with languages such as Ruby and Groovy.

We will look at how you can leverage Spring's scripting support for JSF managed beans. In addition, we will examine the native Groovy support currently available in Mojarra, the JSF reference implementation, as well as upcoming Groovy integration in MyFaces. Finally, we will discuss the future of scripting in JSF 2.0.

Using Shale Test

Testing web applications, and in particular, JavaServer Faces applications, sometimes seems like a black art. For JSF, there are a couple of different approaches for unit testing. This session describes the Shale Test Framework and provides examples of how to use it.

Shale Test is a "stub" framework, which means that it provides dummy objects that work outside of a container. In addition to showing examples of using Shale Test, this session examines the future of the library and its benefits and limitations.

JSF 2.0 Preview

JavaServer Faces, the standard Java web development framework, has gained quite a few fans and detractors over the past few years. Regardless of the camp, most agree that the framework can improve. JSF 2.0, currently under development through the Java Community Process, aims to be a dramatic leap forward for the framework.

This session covers enhancements, changes, and new features currently under discussion by the JSF 2.0 expert group. These include improved Ajax support, better UI component interoperability, simpler component development, a Facelets-style template language, automatic re-deployment of application artifacts, and several other goodies.