Which faces technology for use with GlassFish 2.1 and NetBeans 6.7?

Question

I'm running GlassFish 2.1 and using NetBeans 6.7. I'd like to create a web interface to my data using JSF 1.2. Trouble is, I'm not sure which 'faces' technology to learn (that includes some good documentation). JBoss/RichFaces seem pretty good on documentation, but I'm using GlassFish.

Any thoughts? The choices appear overwhelming:

• Tomahawk
• Tobago
• Trinidad
• ICEfaces
• RCFaces
• Netadvantage
• WebGalileoFaces
• QuipuKit
• BluePrints
• Woodstock
• JBoss RichFaces
• Ajax4jsf
• ILOG
• Oracle ADF
• G4JSF
• Simplica
• Backbase
• jenia4faces
• VisualWebPack
• DynaFaces
• IBM Impl
• Dinamica
• Mojarra
• PrimeFaces
• jQuery
• OpenFaces
• ZK
• ExtJS

Anybody had any experience with any of the above and found the documentation to be clear to a beginner? Being a JSF/Web beginner, I tried some ICEFaces, Mojarra tutorials and had a go at getting RichFaces working with NBeans and GlassFish, but no luck. Lots of XML complaints. I'm clearly missing some huge chunks of configuration, but I can't find any documentation to help me.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated :-)

Answer 1

• Tomahawk - some goodies that extend the core JSF tags. You will eventually need some of those.
• RichFaces - I've used it extensively. It is very good and stable, but requires some learning curve in order to use the Ajax extensions. Lot's of documentation and examples, just look for them on the RichFaces site.
• ICEfaces - also very good, an alternative to RichFaces.
• Tobago, Trinidad - Some components. They don't look too "catchy", but if you need a "strange" component, it is a place to look for it.
• Ajax4jsf - obsolete, now part of RichFaces
• Oracle ADF - I'd personally stay away from anything Oracle's.
• Mojarra - this is the reference implementation of JSF - you should use either Mojarra or MyFaces as your JSF implementation.
• PrimeFaces - very cool components, most of them with limited scope, but in case you need charts, accordion panel, etc, you can include this library. I've used it in a project of mine only for the charts component.
• jQuery - this is not a JSF library, it's a JavaScript framework.
• ZK, ExtJS - Not JSF. They are alternatives for RIA.
• RCFaces, Netadvantage, WebGalileoFaces, QuipuKit, BluePrints, Woodstock, ILOG, G4JSF, Simplica, Backbase, jenia4faces, VisualWebPack, DynaFaces, IBM Impl, Dinamica, OpenFaces - never heard of those (or only saw some of them once or twice), probably not that popular (and stable) after all. I can't recommend any of them.

Answer 2

Note that those are all JSF component libraries. You don't necessarily need them to be able to use JSF. Just the basic JSF implementation (Sun Mojarra or Apache MyFaces) is enough. Those component libraries adds just that extra on top of the basic implementation, often with more skinning capabilities (RichFaces/IceFaces) and/or Ajaxical stuff (RichFaces/IceFaces/Trinidad) and/or more enhanced/specialized components (Tomahawk/PrimeFaces).

Also note that Woodstock is buggy and already dead since a year or two. Don't use it. The IBM components are proprietary and ships with IBM WebSphere only. You don't need them, they're not much better than for example Tomahawk or RichFaces.

I would recommend to just start with Mojarra, which is Sun's own basic JSF implementation. It is already included in GlassFish. You can find the JSF tutorial in Java EE 5 tutorial part II chapters 10-15.