19.5. Other JSF Component Libraries

By standardizing the web component architecture in Java EE, JSF has fostered a marketplace for component libraries. Besides ICEfaces, more than a dozen commercial and open source vendors are competing in this marketplace, providing a decent selection of high-quality JSF components for web developers. Here is a list of some of the well-known third-party JSF component packages. JSF community web sites, such as http://jsfcentral.com and http://java.net, maintain more complete and up-to-date lists of component vendors.

• ICEfaces (www.icefaces.com) is a high-quality AJAX JSF component library that works well with Seam. Compared to RichFaces, it requires a little more configuration, but supports an alternative set of rich widgets. There is an ICEfaces example application included in the standard Seam distribution.

• The Apache MyFaces Tomahawk project (http://myfaces.apache.org/tomahawk) develops rich web UI components such as advanced data tables, tabbed panels, calendars, color pickers, etc., as well as input data validators beyond the standard ones. Tomahawk components are all released under the Apache Open Source License.

• Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) Faces was one of the first commercial JSF component suites. It provides more than 80 UI components, including alternatives to all standard components. The ADF components have a great look-and-feel, and they can all be skinned to different themes. ADF components also boast high performance because each component is rendered via partial page updates (AJAX style, without page reload). Oracle has donated the ADF Faces source code to the open source Trinidad project (http://incubator.apache.org/adffaces) in the Apache foundation.

• The Woodstock project (https://woodstock.dev.java.net) is an open source project to develop AJAX-based enterprise-ready JSF web UI components. It already has more than a dozen components available.

• The Sun BluePrint Catalog (https://bpcatalog.dev.java.net) provides AJAX-enabled JSF components under the BSD license. Those components are primarily provided for educational purposes.

• The ILOG JView JSF components (www.ilog.com/products/jviews) render professional-looking business charts from data models. This is one of the leading business data visualization products.

• Otrix (www.otrix.com) provides commercial AJAX JSF components for trees, menus, data grids, etc.