Java Server Faces (JSF) is a Java-based web application framework
intended to simplify development integration of web-based user
interfaces.
JSF 2 uses Facelets as its default templating system. Other view technologies such as XUL can also be employed. In contrast, JSF 1.x uses JavaServer Pages (JSP) as its default templating system.
JSF is often used together with Ajax, a Rich Internet application
technology. Ajax is a combination of technologies that make it possible
to create rich user interfaces. The user interface components in Mojarra and Apache MyFaces were originally developed for HTML only, and Ajax had to be added via JavaScript.
Latest developments
Facelets
(which was designed specifically for JavaServer Faces) was adopted as
the official view technology for JSF 2.0. This eliminates the life-cycle
conflicts that existed with JSP, forcing workarounds by Java
developers.
Facelets allows easy component/tag creation using XML markup instead of Java code, the chief complaint against JSF 1.x.
The new JSF developments also provide wide accessibility to
Java 5 annotations
such as @ManagedBean, @ManagedProperty and @FacesComponent which
removes the need for faces-config.xml in all cases except framework
extension. Navigation has been simplified, removing the need for
faces-config.xml navigation cases. Page transitions can be invoked
simply by passing the name of the desired View/Facelet.
Addition of Partial State Saving and DOM updates are part of the built in standardized Ajax support.
The latest JSF release has built-in support for handling resources
like images, CSS and Javascript, allowing artifacts to be included with
component libraries, separated into JAR files, or simply co-located into
a consistent place within the web-application. Includes logical naming
and versioning of resources.
JSF 2.0 also includes a number of other changes like adding support
for events, separate development, staging, and production modes, similar
to RAILS_ENV in Ruby on Rails, and significantly expanding the standard
set of components.
