One of the great strengths and successes, I think, of the JavaServer Faces specification is the proliferation of third party components. One of the older and better known component sets is RichFaces, which started out under a company called Exadel and is now part of JBoss. For many, RichFaces is the first add-on component set for a new JSF project, and with good reason. I recently had the opportunity to serve as a technical reviewer on Max Katz’s Practical RichFaces from Apress. Read on for my review of the book. (more…)

Popularity: 15% [?]

Early this morning, I published Mojarra Scales 1.3.1. I’ve been remiss in making good updates where when I make release, so, rather than creating a new post for each release long after the fact, I’ll try to being everyone up to the current state in just one. (more…)

Popularity: 12% [?]

In my experience, a pretty common bug with custom components is improper state saving. Since JSF components are, currently, stateful, it’s important that custom components integrate with the frameworks state saving mechanism correctly. Unfortunately, it can be an error-prone process, as it’s a manual effort. Now, however, custom component authors can use FacesTester to exercise this aspect of their components to help insure proper state handling. This article will show how to use this new feature of FacesTester. (more…)

Popularity: 11% [?]

In Christ Alone:

Then, bursting
forth in glorious
day
Up from the grave
He rose againThere in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then, bursting forth in glorious day
Up from the grave He rose again

And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost it’s grip on me
For I am His and He us mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ

No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is power of Christ in me
From life’s first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny

No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
‘Til He returns or calls me home
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand

Popularity: 7% [?]

Maven catches a lot of flak from a lot of people. I’ve even been known to bemoan some its eccentricities from time to time. Over the past year and a half, though, I’ve done more and more with Maven, and I’m to the point now where that’s all I use. In fact, Maven and Ant have traded positions in my praise and scorn playbook. At any rate, in releasing FacesTester 0.1 yesterday, I was shown how to use the release plugin (which, by the way, has no parallel in Ant-space that I can see). This plugin helps in releasing a version of a project, updating all the version numbers as appropriate. Here’s a rough blow-by-blow of what happened: (more…)

Popularity: 17% [?]

Careful readers of my blog (thank you, dear wife! : ) will remember that I was interviewed at JSFOne by the conference co-founder and JSFCentral founder Kito Mann. That interview, complete with transcript, has been published on JSFCentral. I was a bit nervous about how it would turn out, but I think it turned out pretty well. I’m not a big fan of hearing my recorded voice, but there’s not much to be done about that.

Popularity: 11% [?]

About a month ago, I announced a new project, FacesTester, a JUnit-based testing tool for JSF that my good friend Rod Coffin and I have undertaken. Since then, Rod posted a very nice introduction to FacesTester usage. Today, we made our first official release, FacesTester 0.1. The version number should indicate that it’s still a work in progress, but it is already quite functional (I, for one, have been using it to build a test suite for Mojarra Scales, which has helped drive out features and resolve bugs very quickly). We wanted to push out a release to encourage people to download it, use it, and give us feedback.

So what does FacesTester currently support? Quite a bit. In this entry, we’ll take a quick look at what FacesTester offers, and what we have planned. (more…)

Popularity: 8% [?]