I attended a Webinar today on FLEX, the new design environment from Macromedia. The system is impressive in functionality, but not impressive in terms of integration with existing frameworks. Essentially, integration is attained through the creation of web services; so, rather than having a session object or backing bean, you create a web service that ties into a FLEX UI component.
A major negative is cost. A server component is required at a proposed cost of $12,000 per dual CPU (FLEX is still in beta so this may change). In the past few months there have been several threads in this user group on Struts vs JSF. While I am a big fan of the simplicity and functionality of Struts, I am convinced that Struts in a system that only has a traditional HTML UI will soon be yesterday's news. I would prefer not to be tied to any specific vendor, especailly at a high financial cost. I think the best solution would be to create JSF custom components that are on the same level as the FLEX custom components. Existing applications that are built on Struts could still use Struts as the controller and make a transition to JSF (or some combination) for the View. IBM has a catalog of basic JSF custom components http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/jsf/catalog/WebContent/ What we really need is a catalog of advanced JSF components (things that make you go Wow!). I know that several people from Sun monitor this user group. As a suggestion, I think it would be a good idea to have a link to resources for advanced custom JSF components on the main JSF page: http://java.sun.com/j2ee/javaserverfaces/ IMHO, it would be a great idea for Sun to sponsor a contest with financial rewards for the creation of the coolest JSF custom components. If JSF does not evolve quickly to the same level as FLEX, then the future of interface design will belong to Macromedia. Mike __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
