John Fallows

There's a common misconception among many end users, consumers, and developers that AJAX is the ultimate solution for the Web and that it can provide all the same functionality as a rich desktop solution. Sure, AJAX can cover most of our expectations for a rich client, mimicking functionality provided by a desktop application, but there's still one area that has yet to be fully integrated ­ scalable server-initiated message delivery. With server-initiated message delivery, all end users of a particular application are simultaneously notified of any changes to the application state, e.g., at the stock exchange a stock is dropping fast and the trading application has to inform all traders about the sudden change in price. Server-Initiated Message Delivery Let's use the trading application as an example for server-initiated message delivery. Each broker has his own prefe... (more)

JavaServer Faces and AJAX for Google Fans

This is our last article in a series of four that have been introducing the concepts of creating AJAX-enabled JavaServer Faces (JSF) components. In this article we are going to summarize and encapsulate the concepts that were introduced in the three previous JDJ articles starting with the "Rich Internet Components with JavaServer Faces" (Vol. 10, issue 11), and design a Google-like JDJ InputSuggest component. We will show you how to use Mabon to create a simple and powerful input component with built-in suggest functionality similar to what Google Suggest provides. To make it ea... (more)

JavaServer Faces and AJAX for Google Fans

This is our last article in a series of four that have been introducing the concepts of creating AJAX-enabled JavaServer Faces (JSF) components. In this article we are going to summarize and encapsulate the concepts that were introduced in the three previous articles starting with the "Rich Internet Components with JavaServer Faces", and design a Google-like InputSuggest component. We will show you how to use Mabon to create a simple and powerful input component with built-in suggest functionality similar to what Google Suggest provides. To make it easy for application developer... (more)

Creating AJAX and Rich Internet Components with JSF

This article is based on, and contains excerpts from, the book Pro JSF: Building Rich Internet Components by Jonas Jacobi and John Fallows, published by Apress. Book is available on fine bookstores and Amazon. In our previous article - "Rich Internet Components with JavaServer Faces" (JDJ, Vol. 10, issue 11) - we discussed how JavaServer Faces can fulfill new presentation requirements without sacrificing application developer productivity building Rich Internet Applications (RIA). We discussed how JSF component writers can utilize technologies, such as AJAX and Mozilla XUL, to p... (more)

Super-Charge JSF AJAX Data Fetch

In our last article - "JSF and AJAX" (JDJ, Vol. 11, issue 1) - we discussed how JavaServer Faces component writers can take advantage of the new Weblets Open Source project (http://weblets.dev.java.net) to serve resources such as JavaScript libraries, icons, and CSS files directly from a Java Archive (JAR) without impacting the application developer. In this article we'll address the need to fetch data using AJAX with JavaServer Faces (JSF) components. The most common use cases for fetching data with AJAX are to populate dropdown lists and add type-ahead functionality in text fi... (more)