The Future is Bright for JSF

Today's JSF

JavaServer Faces (JSF) is a Java EE standard technology that enjoys wide support with Java EE application servers including JBoss AS/WildFly, Oracle WebLogic, and IBM WebSphere. In addition, JSF developers benefit from tooling support built-in to Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntelliJ. Over the years, JSF has received many features and improvments thanks to dedicated JCP Expert Groups led by Ed Burns and innovative ideas contributed from open source projects.

JSF component suites like ICEfaces, PrimeFaces, and RichFaces offer a plethora of UI components and advanced features, all built on top of the core JSF standard. Each of these component suites boasts an online "showcase" type of webapp that shows how to use the components in typical use-cases.

JSF 2.0/2.1 was released with Java EE 6 and was well received by developers thanks to the addition of standards-based Ajax features and the adoption of Facelets as the standard templating engine. JSF 2.2 was released with Java EE 7 and added fantastic new features like Faces Flows.

JSF Portlets

Thanks to JSR 329, JSF is fully compatible with Portlet 2.0, another standard from the JCP. The Liferay Faces project is supported under Liferay EE and provides a standards-compliant JSF portlet bridge. With added support from Liferay IDE, developers can easily deploy JSF portlets built with ICEfaces/PrimeFaces/RichFaces within Liferay Portal. In addition, Liferay, Inc. has a technology partnership with ICEsoft and a partnership with PrimeTek in order to support our mutual customers.

Tomorrow's JSF

Recently, Liferay announced a major upgrade to Liferay Faces, which includes support for JSF 2.2 and a suite of JSF components for AlloyUI. ICEsoft has announced ICEfaces 4.0, and the PrimeTek blog has frequent updates on PrimeFaces 5.1. The new Portlet 3.0 standard is being developed under JSR 362 and features optimized support for JSF. Finally, Ed Burns announced Oracle's intention to file a new JSR for JSF 2.3.

The future is bright indeed for JSF. smiley

-- Neil