ICEFaces 1.7.2 and NetBeans 6.1

I downloaded and installed ICEFaces 1.7.2 and its modules for NetBeans 6.1. My conclusion is that is not ready for primetime on NetBeans.

I would recommend that you read the release notes very carefully. The newest version of ICEFaces is not JSF 1.2 compliant. It needs to run in compatibility mode. This requires you to modify the faces-config.xml and web.xml files. This is a major pain point.

The next thing I noticed is that the design-time implementations are not complete. The ability to visually manipulate the components needs some serious work.

I attempted to do one of the tutorials to create a CRUD application using Netbeans. It was very flaky and did not cover the details adequately. In the end I got the application to deploy, and I could click on the table rows, but it did not work as it did in the tutorial.

I have used ICEFaces in the past and I do like their product in general, but it needs to come up to speed with the rest of the world on JSF 1.2 .Its support for NetBeans needs to have more than token capabilities, and it should account for its compatibility issues without intervention from the end user.

The Java Developer's Guide to Web Development

I just read a white paper from Sun called the The Java Developer's Guide to Web Development It is published on Internet.com. I was totally unimpressed. It is a collection of short articles on web frameworks including Wicket, Struts, Stripes, Tapestry, MyFaces, and Spring MVC.

The articles are too short to give you a good feel for the frameworks. At the end of the white paper I felt that I had just wasted a good couple of hours going over it. If you get an email from SDN on it, don't waste your time. I did it for you.

Happy 10th Birthday NetBeans

It is hard to believe that NetBeans is 10 years old. It seems like it was just yesterday that I switched from Sun Forte, Sun Studio Enterprise, and Sun Studio Creator to NetBeans. Don't get me wrong some of these IDEs were more polished at the time, and based on NetBeans in some cases. NetBeans just kept growing and the other IDEs fell by the wayside.

Why have multiple code bases? Sun made a good decision to focus on the community tool instead of wasting time on multiple code bases. It took time to get to this point though, but I think we can all agree it was a good decision.

I am participating in the NetBeans Decathalon. They wanted to know how I use NetBeans. Well as you can see from my blog... I use it on everything! On a serious note, I use NetBeans to develop enterprise class applications for my employer. It is a complete package from head to toe to accomplish this task. Most of my applications are JSF based interacting with JMS, EJBs, and Web Services. All of this on top of Project GlassFish.

My biggest project with NetBeans was using Visual JSF a.k.a Visual Web Pack (VWP) (Project Woodstock) to develop a timesheet tracking system which linked to our field force automation system and SAP.

This is also my favorite NetBeans story...

I decided to use VWP in NetBeans 5.0 to start the development. As more features were added to VWP, I kept upgrading. Eventually I was using 5.5 nightly builds along with Glassfish nightly builds. This became our production environment. NetBeans 6.0 nightly builds and GlassFish V1 Build 48. I just took Glassfish B48 out of production last week and replaced it with V2 UR2. This is a testament to how solid Glassfish is, and how useful NetBeans was in accomplishing my task.

I have been tasked to update this application by years end. I am waiting for NetBeans 6.5 to be released before I start. I am also waiting for some definitive word on Project Woodstock.

Happy Birthday NetBeans...