[jsr-314-open] Components

[Dan Allen]

When Andy and I spoke last week, we seemed to be in agreement about the goal
of this expanded set of components, which I will restate here.

To recap, the existing components set--specifically the form elements--are
roughly a 1-to-1 mapping with HTML. But by no means is HTML a comprehensive
set of core components. The way I see it is if you were to take ~100
applications (web, Oracle Forms, mobile, paper, etc) and try to find the
components that show up a majority of the time, excluding "rich" components
like trees and menus, that should be your core set of components. The reason
I exclude the rich components is because they have way too many
configuration options to have a good standard...they end up getting replaced
anyway (feel free to argue otherwise). The standard set should be expanded
primarily in the area of form inputs. But I can also see the defense for
better table support since it is of equal importance in web apps.

A perfect example of a missing component is a date input. Dates are
universal. You can guarantee that you are going to need one somewhere in
your app. Yet, it is missing from the core component set. You have to take
the lame and insufficient approach of using a converter with an h:inputText.
Of course, you will eventually want to style or even replace the date input
with some fancy version from ADF Faces, RichFaces or ICEFaces. But the point
is, you can at least get the application going with the core component set.
Thje developer is hooked at that point.

Just to give you a feel for other types of components that might be
warranted, pick up an Android device or iPhone and flip through a couple of
apps. You'll notice some core components that you just expect to be there
but don't map with our "traditional" view of inputs, painted in our minds by
HTML. Inputs like phone number, date, time, color, file upload. So let's
work to cover the "lame if absent" cases and then we can debate the cases
that are on the fence.

-Dan

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Jim Driscoll <Jim.Driscoll at sun.com> wrote:

> Andy had mentioned that there was interest in adding a few components for
> JSF 2.next.  And our audience mentioned that as well.
>
> I thought it would be an interesting exercise to try to gather up a list of
> what kinds of components already existed as either existing JSF or
> JavaScript widgets, and I went a little overboard - but hopefully you'll
> find it useful as something to stimulate thought on the topic.
>
>
> http://weblogs.java.net/blog/driscoll/archive/2009/10/14/almost-comprehensive-list-components
>
> Jim
>



-- 
Dan Allen
Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat | Author of Seam in Action
Registered Linux User #231597

http://mojavelinux.com
http://mojavelinux.com/seaminaction
http://www.google.com/profiles/dan.j.allen
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