Does JSF make sense in a HTML5 world?

[vineetb]

Reposting as this question was marked closed on StackOverflow. Would
love to hear what you guys have to say.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8607979/does-jsf-and-jsf-components-makes-sense-in-a-html5-world

"Since most of HTML5 is about client-side components and client-side
JS logic, does it make sense to use JSF with HTML5? It seems to me
that most of the "features" JSF (as a view technology) provides
overlap with HTML5 ones (rich components, lifecycle, ajax). In other
words, what benefits would I gain in using JSF instead of a simpler
pure-servlet (or SpringMVC, or something RESTful, etc.) backend?

By the way, what do you suggest as a Java backend framework for HTML5
apps?"

[vineetb]

My comments

This is a great question. Something I've been thinking about as well.
There are new ways to develop user interface layers with javascript
MVC frameworks and javascript templating engines. The need for server-
side view technologies such as JSF and SpringMVC is diminished.

- vineet

On Dec 22, 1:23 pm, vineetb <vineet.vine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Reposting as this question was marked closed on StackOverflow. Would
> love to hear what you guys have to say.
>

> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8607979/does-jsf-and-jsf-component...

[Carl Jokl]

Can you be more specific about new features in HTML 5 that make what
the Web Frameworks do redundant? This is not a loaded question I just
have heard mostly about things like the canvas tag and integrated
audio and video tags and not much about the other bits which affect
this. I also am not sure whether HTML 5 includes much in the way of
changes to JavaScript from the document I read but I may have been
mislead or have misunderstood. I have heard of "web sockets" which I
can only guess are some kind of new APIs to tap into Socket
communication maybe but all I have heard is the name so I might be
totally wrong about what they do. Then there are optional technologies
like WebGL that Microsoft seems to have no interest in implementing.

[vineetb]

HTML5 by itself won't be sufficient. Let me clarify.
For example, with Flex/GWT most of the user interface code is written
in Flex/GWT and not using web frameworks.
You would need javascript MVC framework and javascript templating
engine. Backend services could be written to output json or xml.
Linkedin has started following this approach. See Leaving JSPs in the
dust: moving LinkedIn to dust.js client-side templates (https://
engineering.linkedin.com/frontend/leaving-jsps-dust-moving-linkedin-
dustjs-client-side-templates)

- vineet

[James Ward]

Web apps are going back to the client/server model where the client is
the browser, the UI actually runs on the client, and the client is built
with client-side technologies (CoffeeScript, Dust.js, Backbone.js,
LESS/Sass, Twitter Bootstrap, etc).

I don't think that server-side component frameworks play well with this
model, but there is a layer of tooling that these frameworks can
provide. For instance, Play 2 has the usual server-side templating, but
also has great support for compiling CoffeeScript, JavaScript, Less,
etc. Server-side frameworks can assist with the development of the
client-side code.

My favorite parts of the new model include being able to edge cache the
entire client-side of a web app and moving session state out of the
server and onto the client (where it belongs). Those two things can
lead to much better scalability.

-James

[Antoine Pourriot]

Posts here and there says JSF 2.2 will bring HTML 5 support.

But basically JSF is a framework event and component oriented. It is a MVC model in which you can choose the way you call the controller.

It is useful for intranet web applications : you control the client (browser) and need to industrialize the production of dozen of standardized screens.

It is not well adapted to public websites, particularly with the owner likes html5 and fresh webdesign.

[Vince O'Sullivan]

On Dec 22 2011, 6:23 pm, vineetb <vineet.vine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Reposting as this question was marked closed on StackOverflow.

the response on Stackoverflow, to what seemed like a very reasonable
question - to me, was both surprising and disappointing. I'm in the
middle of putting together a JSP 2.0 web app with an HTML5 front-end
and I've not encountered any particular difficulty, though the overall
result does seem to be overly complex to assemble.

An alternative to the question might be...

..actually, best if I start another thread.