Today, the RichFaces 4 Alpha 2 was released. For an overview of what’s new in JSF2 and the possibilities, check out this blog by Andy Schwartz for a complete review with lots of links and documentation.

Quote from the Richfaces Project Page
RichFaces is a component library for JSF and an advanced framework for easily integrating AJAX capabilities into business applications.

  • 100+ AJAX enabled components in two libraries
    • a4j: page centric AJAX controls
    • rich: self contained, ready to use components
  • Whole set of JSF benefits while working with AJAX
  • Skinnability mechanism
  • Component Development Kit (CDK)
  • Dynamic resources handling
  • Testing facilities for components, actions, listeners, and pages
  • Broad cross-browser support
  • Large and active community
JSF 2 and RichFaces 4

We are working hard on RichFaces 4.0 which will have full JSF 2 integration. That is not all though, here is a summary of updates and features:

  • Redesigned modular repository and build system.
  • Simplified Component Development Kit with annotations, faces-config extensions, advanced templates support and more..
  • Ajax framework improvements extending the JSF 2 specification.
  • Component review for consistency, usability, and redesign following semantic HTML principles where possible.
  • Both server-side and client-side performance optimization.
  • Strict code clean-up and review.

I followed the tutorial on how to get a project up and running from this JBoss Community article and started work on a clean skeleton. On this blank project I will be experimenting with JSF2 and richfaces components in the near future.

With this blank project in mind, I created following architecture:

  • Maven2 Project
  • Reference JSF2 API and IMPL
  • RichFaces 4.0.0.Alpha2 component library

You can immediatly start experimenting by importing this Maven2 project in your favourite IDE (mvn eclipse:eclipse goal is configured). Have fun!

Download Maven2 Skeleton

Download WAR