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[ANNOUNCE] Podcast with Ted Goddard of ICEsoft

From: Kito D. Mann <kmann_at_virtua.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 18:53:28 -0400

Hello,

 

Believe it or not, JSFCentral has more content :-). We just posted an
interview with ICEsoft senior architect Ted Goddard. It was recorded in May
of 2007 at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, CA. Here's an excerpt:

 

Kito:

Okay, so you talk about Ajax Framework and Ajax Push, let' s talk about the
Ajax Framework part. Is ICEfaces a component suite or framework or both?

 

Ted:

It' s both really. ICEfaces starts off with an architecture for updating the
page. Once you have the ability to generally update the page, you start
using a technique we call Direct-to-DOM rendering. Then you can build a
bunch of interesting components around that. We also make use of some
JavaScript libraries like Prototype and Script.aculo.us so that we can
expose the capabilities of Script.aculo.us to the developer. Script.aculo.us
is a really nice JavaScript API but what if you are not a JavaScript
developer? Then you need a nice Java API for working with Script.aculo.us,
so what we do is provide Script.aculo.us effects modeled in JSF so that the
JSF developer can have drag and drop and effects capabilities.

 

Kito:

You mentioned Direct-to-DOM techniques, what is that?

 

Ted:

Direct-to-DOM is the technique that ICEfaces uses to render the JSF
components. The way it works is, instead of rendering to a stream as JSF
normally would, ICEfaces components render into a document object model on
the server. That allows us to efficiently detect just the changes to that
DOM and send just the changes down to the browser. The ability to send just
the changes to a browser page is one of the key user interface features of
Ajax. When you interact with an Ajax application, you don' t want a full
page refresh, you just want the page to be updated in place. This change
detection through the Document Object Model on the server is a very
effective way to do that.

 

Read the full article or download the podcast here:
http://www.jsfcentral.com/articles/goddard-06-08.html.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kito D. Mann - Author, JavaServer Faces in Action
 <http://www.virtua.com/> http://www.virtua.com - JSF/Java EE consulting,
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