JSF

I am very mixed feelings about JSF. The main problem is that it started so badly; it is unthinkable that you have to use the verbatim tag to write HTML; it is so unfriendly towards web designers.

Part of the thinking behind JSF is that web developers would move towards using IDEs with a rich set of components that they can drag and drop on a canvas; I cannot imagine many web designers using NetBeans or Eclipse for developing web pages.

Things have improved and the introduction of Facelets makes collaboration between designers and developers possible and at the same time allows access to the rich set of JSF components available.

JBOSS Seam is an interesting product that is well worth a look.