Look Ahead at JSF 2.0
Posted by cmdln on June 3rd, 2007
I’ve been reading the Core JSF book by Horst and Geary and trying to filter out the hype, specifically about tool support and multiple render kits, from what would actually be an improvement over the ancient version of Struts I use at work. I think JSF has promise and I am even pleased to see some of the improvements supposedly promised in the forthcoming 2.0 specification.
However, is this too little too late? I have not been so impressed with any of the web UI toolkits I’ve encountered that I have decided to give them a try for the day job. And the JSF 2.0 spec won’t drop until later in the year. Then there is the lag in someone actually implementing it. So even if it is worthwhile, how much more irrelevant will it be made by other platforms and toolkits?
For my current project, if I am going to switch toolkits, it has to be now. Having JSF 2.0 pending is actually a reason for not using JSF as we’ve got a built-in migration challenge if support for 1.2 starts to die off. It seems likely in the last few years, Java has inflicted more geek fatigue than earlier in my career, too. Or maybe it is just me.