In summary: I would recommend buying this reference if you are a consumer, designer, UI-developer who is working with existing component libraries, Facelets or JSF 2.0, and not so much focused on creating custom Java-components of your own. I don’t, for every-day web-site components, see why you would need much more than what is featured between the covers of this book. Ian Hlavats does a fantastic job of making bringing JSF to the everyday development setting.

JSF 1.2 Components By Ian Hlavats Download Chapter 2: Facelets Components as a PDF

In detail:

Initially hesitant to buy a reference on components, I have to admit that I was surprised to learn so much by reading through this book. As a member of the JavaServer Faces 2.0 expert group, and a full-time software engineer, components are not my strong-suit. If you’re at all like me, then you’re probably asking yourself the same question I did:

“What can I learn in this book that I can’t find on Google? JavaServer Faces has a huge online community, and there’s a lot of information available already.”

It’s a valid question, but you should keep reading because this book offers something important that I rarely find in blog entries or wikis: “features you wouldn’t think to look for; features that you wish you’d thought of, or don’t know how to make yourself.” I wish I had found this book when I started using JSF, because I’d probably have been more comfortable, and much more productive with our component side of the life-cycle, so to speak; I discovered features of the framework, and pre-made UI-tools that I wish I’d known about years ago.

Things you’ll learn about:

Modal windows, menus, wizards and workflows, AJAX anything with Ajax4JSF, i18n and localization, gCal-like schedules with Apache Tomahawk, multi-field validation, calendars, charts and graphs, file-uploads, user permissions/security, skinning, styling, and all major component libraries are covered in this book (save PrimeFaces, which gets a mere mention.)

If you think you’re looking at “Just another book on JSF component writing,” that’s not entirely the case. This book provides real solutions, real examples on how to get started writing JSF applications using existing component libraries and plug-ins. There are two types of chapters in this book: tutorials and references. The tutorials will get you up and running with a quick example, while the reference sections go in depth on usage of individual components within each library.

You’ll also (as a bonus, in my opinion) get some appetite-whetting information on the JBoss Seam framework, which is a user-friendly and business-oriented extension to the Java EE technologies. I didn’t get a very good picture of all of the concepts until I actually looked at the code samples (downloadable here, or just follow the link in the preface,) but that’s hardly a strong criticism; though, it may have helped if the code samples were more explicitly, frequently referenced.

In the end “The title doesn’t lie”:

• I haven’t seen a more comprehensive book on component libraries and component writing made available to date.
• JSF2 component writing has been simplified, but if you want to supplement your app with everyday things like in-place editing, accordions, and more, you’re going to want good examples; this book provides examples in abundance (even examples of JSF2 EzComp, which is a dream to use. UI like it was meant to be)
• Even if components and UI design are not your strong-point, that is exactly why you should read this book; it makes component-based design easy to understand, and easy to implement.

The author covers many of the advancements in component writing and simplified configuration that are provided by JSF 2.0, but I would have liked to hear some information on the component behaviors model, and mention of integration with frameworks like CDI (JSR-299) and Spring; however, this is not entirely relevant to component writing, and plenty of information exists on sites like www.javaserverfaces.org or Google.

My one complaint is that for a book titled “JSF 1.2 Components,” it did not explain, or teach me how to create custom Java-based components, which are essential for complex behavior and interaction at some level. JSF 2.0 has done a good job of making Java-based components unnecessary, but this book is titled JSF 1.2 components, thus, I would have liked to see how to write a Java-based component in JSF 1.2.

End notes:

Make sure you check out www.javaserverfaces.org. It’s a great starting point and reference for JSF that you will undoubtably bookmark if doing a lot of work, and doing the work with this book. Also check out http://ocpsoft.com/prettyfaces/ for more information on Pretty URLs in JSF, and building client-facing JSF web applications.

Socialize: This is my first app – a glorified “echo.” Send, refresh, and it will display what you’ve entered. But the cool thing is that this entire program took about 15 lines of code, and 10 lines of XML. It took me about 3 hours to install the tools, learn the API, deploy to my phone, and walk downstairs to show my roommate… not bad. But now the hunt is on. What am I going to create? I have a few ideas, nothing much of consequence: ScrumShark will need an Android app, and oh, I suppose iPhone, too. But what of value can really be created? I find myself at a mental standstill. So much power at my fingertips, but no strong vision of what it could mean. A big part of me feels that technology, as it becomes increasingly accessible, raises greater walls and prevents us from experiencing the true human interaction that we so desperately need. Perhaps an app to bring people together, physically, to meet and enjoy spending time together. Google Latitude is close, but not quite there… We’ll see what comes to mind… Randall, any good ideas?

A few tips for the Linux users:

If you are developing with an AVD (Android Virtual Device) and you happen to plug your phone in, when you click “Run as, or Debug as Android Application,” Eclipse is going to try to deploy the app to your phone. Two things may happen:

1. Your application will be deployed to the phone. Just so you know in case it’s not what you want to do. Be careful.

2. If you are trying to deploy to your phone, but haven’t yet set up USB permissions, you will get a NullPointerException: “Failed to deploy…” – This means your USB permissions are wrong. More on that…

Fixing the null-pointer:

An internal error occurred during: "Socialize". java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.internal.launch.AndroidLaunchController.launch(Unknown Source)
at com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.internal.launch.LaunchConfigDelegate.doLaunch(Unknown Source)
at com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.internal.launch.LaunchConfigDelegate.launch(Unknown Source)

Chances are you need set up USB permissions by taking the following steps:

Plug in your phone and run “lsusb”

lincoln@quadshark ~ $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 008: ID 22b8:41db Motorola PCS 
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 046d:c505 Logitech, Inc. Cordless Mouse+Keyboard Receiver
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 046d:c041 Logitech, Inc. G5 Laser Mouse
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
lincoln@quadshark ~ $

This line: “Bus 002 Device 008: ID 22b8:41db Motorola PCS” is what you are looking for. “22b8″ is my “idProduct”, and “41db” is my idVendor. Your phone may be different, so keep that in mind when you are following the next steps.

As root, Edit or Create: /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idProduct}=="22b8", ATTRS{idVendor}=="41db",
MODE="0666", OWNER="lb3"

As root, Run: chmod a+r /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

lb3@quadshark ~ $ ls -la /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 95 2009-11-15 17:19 /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

If your permissions look like the file above, and your IDs are set up correctly, then you should now be able to properly deploy and debug applications on your actual Android Phone! Enjoy

But where to go from here?

So many ideas already out there, but an infinity of un-thought-of ideas remain. Where do I go from here? How many other people out in this world have the desire to create, but a severe case of writer’s block!? Help me, Randall…….

PERL!

Q. Do you think it’s a good idea?

Absolutely. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL -> T, sometime. Click performance — I guarantee your CPU is running at about 1-5% utilization, somewhere around 97-99% of the time. From another perspective: that’s 95-99% waste of power, 97-99% of the time. And that’s just while you are physically using your computer… then you have to consider all of the wasted disk space. We have huge disk drives in our PCs (Most corporate employers only give us access to a small portion,) but that’s huge waste as well.

If you could combine and utilize all of that wasted space, running applications on PCs that have available power / bandwidth, you could, in theory, increase utilization all the way to about 80-90% without negative performance impact. From a cost perspective, that means you need fewer physical computers. You spend less money on power, less money on cooling, less money on everything, and you get more available processing time.

Q. Is there money that we could make in that operation?

Depends what you mean. Big security-sensitive corporations? Only if they outsourced to someone else’s cloud. That would save them money. OcpSoft? – Probably only in the same way. We’d have to come up with some idea that takes advantage of the scalability and flexibility of the cloud. Otherwise there’s no real benefit, and we should just run our own services.

With ScrumShark, for example… if we hosted on the Amazon EC2 cloud: Amazon lets you charge an additional fee on top of their cloud utilization fee. So if you provide custom hosted applications to individual clients, you can simplify billing, membership, usage, and support charges into just one charge – usage. The more they use the product, the more it costs them. The less they you use it, the less it costs them — that could be an attractive marketing strategy for some clients. do you think it is the future of computers and data management?

The only thing that hinders, and will continue to hinder cloud computing is security and risk. You don’t have physical control of your data or files. Do you trust your cloud provider? Are they adequately securing your system? What happens if they lose your data? Do they have a backup and disaster recovery plan that is adequate for your needs? With good reason, that’s a risk that Corporations, and many other financial and highly-confidential based companies, are not willing to take. People’s personal and financial data and security are too important to risk.

Q. Sounds like a big drawback, who would choose that?

For many smaller companies with a lower risk-profile, it makes a lot of sense: their data can be backed up to a private server; they pay for the computing power they need; they don’t have to service their own hardware. It just depends on your needs.

How would you use the cloud?