The Basics

Abstract

Welcome to Practical RichFaces, second edition. In your hands (or on your computer/phone/tablet), you’ve got everything you need to start developing cool and rich Ajax applications with JSF and RichFaces. In this first chapter, we will give you a short overview of JavaServer Faces (JSF), as RichFaces is a framework for JSF. Although we do assume that you have some knowledge of JSF, don’t worry—even if you are just starting, we made sure the material and all the examples in this book are very easy to understand. Once we cover JSF, we will discuss RichFaces: its features and the history behind it, how it got started and where it is today. Lastly, we will share two stories to help you keep an open mind when using JSF, as well as some tips on working with a server-side framework. The stories are from our personal experiences and should help you become a better JSF and RichFaces developer.