ICEfaces – The Meltdown

I was recently asked to get accustomed with ICEfaces and initially I had no clue what it was, ICEfaces you say? Is that a new movie?

Well,  its got to do with programming for those less technically minded (well even those who are technically minded like myself would not know what it is)

Approach

The approach that I will take is to do the following:

1. Brief introduction of the technology
2. Advantages
3. Disadvantages
4. Create actual sample programs using ICEfaces

This post will provide firstly myself and then the yourself a brief introduction into ICEfaces.

The Journey Begins – Brief Introduction

Let us begin our journey in learning this new technology.

I find it useful in getting an overview of the technology before actually getting into the nitty gritty details of the technology. Here is something I stumbled upon:

“ICEfaces is an open source Ajax framework that enables Java EE application developers to create and deploy server-based rich Internet application (RIA) using the Java language.”

That summary gives us a brief overview of ICEfaces, so its a framework that allows developers to create ‘desktop like’ internet based applications in the java language.

So the first thing that came to mind when I heard about ICEfaces was Java Server Faces (JSF), and yup I was correct! it is related. Well done chap! (not really well done since the Faces should of given it away)

Research Methodology

My first search on google was ” wiki icefaces”. Using Wikipedia just to get an overview almost always works for me.  I ended up here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICEfaces

Have a look at it and be sure to check out the related links.

The second reference I had was a nice sized book called: “ICEfaces 1.8: Next Generation Enterprise Web Development by Rainer Eschen”

Just a thought or commentary on the general research approach taken by many developers is a combination of using books and just searching the internet for various articles and samples that gives the researcher a wider spectrum of opinions and views.

The Basics

“The key to the ICEfaces architecture is a server-centric application model, where all application logic is developed in pure Java, and executes in a standard Java application server runtime environment”

In summary what is ICEfaces? To me with not much context it seems to be a means of creating web based applications using AJAX without really getting into the very details of AJAX.

Difference Between ICEfaces and JSF

ICEfaces uses the JSF framework but differs mainly in the rendering of the changes to the DOM. ICEfaces does a incremental change to the DOM and this is very useful especially when we consider its being used in web applications with varied line speeds.

All this theory is great, but if you a developer and you are reading this you want to see some action and soon enough you will see some.

WWW.ICEFACES.ORG

Blog Soon!

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