Welcome graphic artists! The PrettyFaces project needs a logo, and to facilitate this, we’re hosting a logo contest! Prizes: We know that your time is valuable, but because this is a completely open-source and unfunded project, we can’t offer a cash reward; however, will receive a T-shirt with your logo on it, a blog entry announcing you as the winner, a prominent spot (with link) on our contributors page, a spot (with link) on the home-page as a FAQ entry, and the satisfaction of knowing that you helped an open-source project!

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The PrettyFaces team is currently working on an alternative way to configure URL mappings. PrettyFaces will soon allow to use annotations instead of the classic XML configuration file to declare mappings. We encourage everyone interested in PrettyFaces to take a look at this new way of configuration and share his or her opinion with us.
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As everyone knows, or should know, one of the best conferences of our time will be taking place in Boston, MA between June 21st and June 25th, 2010. What people might not know, is that PrettyFaces has a chance to present there! All we need is your vote. It’s called JBoss World, and if you haven’t already, you can still purchase passes at a reduced rate.

Voting ends Friday May 21st, so act now!

1. You’ll need to register for an account on JBoss.org (Remember when creating an account that you’ll need to use a valid email address for registration confirmation!)
2. Vote – for “Beautiful Java EE: Use PrettyFaces to Harness SEO, Improve User Exp, and Ease Dev by Lincoln Baxter” – otherwise known as “Beautiful Java EE: Next-generation web application for next-generation web users.”
3. If you have problems voting after registration, log out, clear your cookies, log in, then navigate back to the contest and vote.

Do your part: Vote!

Here’s a simple tip for all of you AJAX lovers using JSF 2.0. It is possible to render components that live outside of the form where your AJAX tag lives; actually, it’s possible to render any component by using it’s fully-qualified component ID.

Just prefix the target ID with the naming-container separator character, usually “:”, and provide the full name of the component as it is rendered on the HTML page.

<f:ajax execute="validatePasswords password @this" render=":messages" />

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We’d like to take a moment to introduce you to the OcpSoft Support Forums.

These forums will serve as an alternative to the existing User’s Group mailing lists for PrettyFaces, PrettyTime, and SocialPM.

Take a few moments to register for a forum account; start asking questions!

Please enjoy, and as always: thanks for supporting us!

I’d like to start by saying that using JSF by itself can sometimes feel trying to pull your own teeth out with a pair of tweezers, but there’s hope. JSF was designed to be a platform of extensions – a foundation for building web-frameworks, and that it’s done very well. JSF 2.0 addresses most of the concerns about usability (so there’s less tooth pulling,) and provides even more extensibility. That’s where Seam Faces comes in, that’s where PrettyFaces comes in.

On many occasions you might find yourself needing to compare the values of multiple input fields on a given page submit: confirming a password; re-enter password; address lookups; and so on. Performing cross-field form validation is simple – just place Seam’s <s:validateForm> component in the form you wish to validate, then attach your custom Validator.
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When developing any system or software, it is important to test as much of that system as possible. Web frameworks are no exception; comprehensive, well-designed unit tests are critical for long-term success and maintenance.

With the introduction of Contexts and Dependency Injection into the Java Enterprise framework (otherwise known as CDI – Weld, or Apache OpenWebBeans,) unit testing is as important as ever, but it would be nice to harness the power of CDI for use in unit tests, as well as in the production system!
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Ever wondered why JSF doesn’t support bean @Inject-ion in Converters or Validators? Ever wondered how to listen to a single PhaseEvent or ComponentSystemEvent, or filter on events by componentId, or view? Ever wondered why you can’t just @Inject FacesContext, or NavigationHandler?

Well… now you can, with the brand-new, just-out release of Seam Faces — 3.0.0.Alpha3

<dependency>
 <groupid>org.jboss.seam.faces</groupid>
 <artifactid>seam-faces</artifactid>
 <version>3.0.0.Alpha3</version>
</dependency>

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OcpSoft PrettyTime is an open-source time-formatting library for creating human-readable timestamps like, “in 3 minutes,” or “moments ago.” — intuitive, easy, extendable. Visit the home page to download and learn more about using PrettyTime. New features in this release: Thread Safety, Java 1.5 compatibility, extra languages. Read the rest of this entry »

Three steps to add Embedded GlassFish to any existing project POM. (Upcoming – Part 2: Using Embedded JBoss AS with Maven)

Using Embedded Glassfish

The Embedded Glassfish project is hosted on java.net, and as it is described, is very simple: “This project develops APIs and tools around “embedded GlassFish v3″. Embedded GFv3 is a delivery vehicle of GFv3 so that applications and tools can use GFv3 just as a library, inside their JVM, instead of having GFv3 as the overload of the entire JVM process. (And no, embedded GFv3 is not meant to be run on JavaME.)”
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