Thursday, 22 July 2010
The ICEfaces 2.0 Component Story
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ICEfaces "Compat" Components
ICEfaces 2.0 includes the ICEfaces 1.x Component Suite components in a "Compatibility" (or "Compat") library (icefaces-compat.jar). The purpose of the compatibility library is two-fold:
1. Provide key ICEfaces 1.x APIs on top of ICEfaces 2.0 to make porting existing ICEfaces 1.x applications easier. ICEfaces 2.0 uses different packaging and APIs than 1.x and is not directly backwards compatible. The Compatibility APIs basically provide key 1.x APIs as wrappers for the new 2.0 APIs.
2. Provide the ICEfaces 1.x Component Suite for use on ICEfaces 2.0. Since the ICEfaces 1.x Components also rely on many of the ICEfaces 1.x APIs internally, they also require using the Compatibility APIs to function on ICEfaces 2.0.
Note that there is nothing JSF 1.2 about the Compatibility APIs and Components, they are meant to run only on JSF 2.0 on top of ICEfaces 2.0. The "Compatibility" term refers to ICEfaces 1.8 compatibility, not JSF 1.2.
New ICEfaces 2.0 Components
There is also a new generation of ICEfaces components under development for ICEfaces 2.0, based on a new Component Development Platform (CDP). The goal of the new CDP is to greatly ease the effort required to create and maintain new ICEfaces 2.0 components, providing a sophisticated set of features to reduce code replication and the amount of code that must be hand-crafted and maintained, resulting in improved developer productivity, and more efficient components at runtime.
These components will be delivered gradually, with the initial set of new components arriving along with the new CDP in the ICEfaces Beta2 release. The initial set of new components will include new File Upload, Slider, DateTimeSelector, and TabPanel components. When ICEfaces 2.0 ships final in the fall we expect to have 5 - 10 new components ready. More new components will be delivered after that in 2.1, etc. The ultimate goal is to provide replacement component functionality for virtually the complete ICEfaces 1.x Component Suite (not necessarily in a one-to-one relationship with existing components), but this is going to take some time to achieve.
Another aspect of the new component initiative is to invite and support community involvement and contributions by hosting an ICEfaces 2 Community Component Showcase and repository on the www.icefaces.org site, allowing ICEfaces Contributor's to submit their own CDP-based components for use and review by the community. This will be in place around the time of ICEfaces 2.0 final release.
We expect that most early ICEfaces 2.0 applications will take advantage of the 1.8 Compat Components alongside std. JSF components and the new ICEfaces 2.0 Components, as required.
One of the great aspects of ICEfaces is that it provides a comprehensive set of framework-level features that provide substantial benefits over using stock JSF 2, regardless of the component-sets being used.
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Posted by at 7:13 PM in Entries by Ken Fyten
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The ICEfaces 2.0 Component Story
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