The RichFaces team has just released 4.0.0.M2, and we are one more milestone closer to the Final. This is our second monthly milestone release, with new components, bug fixes, and other updates. We also worked hard to stabilize the core, CDK, build system, and previously migrated components.

You can download the distribution at our RichFaces download page. The RichFaces-4.0.0.M2 distribution has everything you need to get started. Check out the readme.txt files for any details, or dependencies. If you are a maven user you can follow the instructions here: How to add RichFaces 4.X to Maven Based Project. Note that with the build updates some of the maven information has changed.

Some notable updates:

• New components: accordion, autocomplete, inplaceInput, and inputNumberSlider
• Large scale stabilization to our core and CDK modules.
• Finalized and updated our build structure to make it easier to download, update, and contribute.
• The RichFaces Showcase Demo has been updated with all the M1, and M2 components, and now provides source listings.
• We already completed cloud support updates, and will make an announcement with instructions soon.

For all the details you can review the 4.0.0.M2 Release Notes. and please let us know of any problems for bugs you may find.

Next Up Milestone 3

In Milestone 3 we are ramping up component development, including calendar, autoComplete behavior, tabPanel, messages, collapsiblePanel, inplaceSelect, and more. This release is scheduled for late September, early October.

If we are missing your favorite component, or if you find an issue please let us know either through our forums, or our project jira. You can also see our current plans by following the 4.0.0.Milestone3 project in jira, or dropping by one of our public IRC meetings. See our Project Calendar and the Meeting Information page for more details, agendas, and minutes.

So What About the Final Release

We are in the process of evaluating the remaining components, and features for the Final release. Although our schedule have slipped due to unforeseen issues, we still plan to get the Final release out as soon as possible. More to come…

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RichFaces 4.0.0.M1 has been released!! This is the first of our monthly releases on the road to the 4.0.0.Final release. From here on out every month we will release an updated milestone with new components, features, and stabilization!

As always you can download the release at the RichFaces Download page and the readme.txt in the RichFaces-4.0.0.M1 distribution contains all you need to get started and integrate the library into your application. If you are using maven for your project you can follow the wiki instructions: How to add RichFaces 4.X to Maven Based Project.

For all the details you can review the 4.0.0.M1 Release Notes. and please let us know of any problems for bugs you may find.

Some notable updates:

• Improvements to the Component Development Kit (CDK)
• New components: jQuery, togglePanel, list, dataGrid, panel, and popup
• Added named queue support for our queue implementation
• Further improvements to our iteration components; rich:dataTable, and rich:extendedDataTable
• Stabilization works for migrated code. Automation tests with quint, junit.

Draft CDK Development Guide

We're also really glad to announce a new 'CDK Guide' document started by Bernard Labno ( who's also working on a scheduler component for 4.0)! For now it is a google document and is not complete, but worth a look through. We are planning to shift this to a wiki based guide on the CDK in order to be closer to our community. Bernard has done a great job starting the document, and any feedback or contributions are welcome!

Milestone2 and Beyond

Our next release is going to be 4.0.0.M2 and is scheduled for release in late August. At that point CDK and core should be stable, and component migration should be in full swing. If we are missing your favorite component, or if you find an issue please let us know either through our forums, or our project jira. You can also see our current plans by following the 4.0.0.Milestone2 project in jira, or dropping by one of our public IRC meetings. See the Project Calendar and the Meeting Information page for more details, agendas, and minutes.

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RichFaces 4.0.0.Alpha2 has been released, and the project is moving into a new phase! We had a lot to do on our way to this milestone, not only did we add new features, and components, but also made many general improvements. The core functionality, build system, and CDK features were redesigned to make framework development more convenient for RichFaces developers and community contributors.

Some highlights in RichFaces 4.0.0.ALPHA2:

• Redesigned and improved Component Development Kit
• Ajax core components set almost completely migrated.
• Ajax request smart Queuing mechanism implemented
• Rich Data Iteration components created
• Skinning including standard control skinning feature was migrated.

You can download all the release artifacts at the RichFaces download page, and review the release notes. The distribution readme.txt in the richfaces-4.0.0.ALPHA2 file contains all you need to get started and integrate the library into your application. If you are using maven you can follow the wiki instructions: How to add RichFaces 4.X to Maven Based Project.

Our next release will be 4.0.0.Milestone1 (M1), and is the first of the time-boxed milestone releases. For M1 we will be releasing right around July 20th, with future milestone releases about every month, until we are ready for the final 4.0.0 releases.

Get Started Quick with our Archetype

This release also includes a maven archetype. This will create an very basic application that you can build from, and update as needed. For future releases we'll have more complex archetypes as well.

To use the archetype the first step it to follow the JBoss Maven Settings to get the repository set up in your settings.xml file. Then generate the archetype:

mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=org.richfaces.archetypes -DarchetypeArtifactId=richfaces-archetype-simpleapp -DarchetypeVersion=4.0.0.Alpha2 -DgroupId=my.group.id -DartifactId=new_project

For all the details check out our Getting Started Guide.

Components

As I said we have added many components, including rich:dataTable, and rich:extendedDataTable. The complete list of the available components, behaviors, tags, and functions are listed below. Every monthly milestone release we'll be adding to this list, and stabilizing what is already here. Give these a shot and let us know what you think, or if you run into any issues.

Core:

• a4j:ajax
• a4j:commandLink
• a4j:commandButton
• a4j:push
• a4j:mediaOutput
• a4j:status
• a4j:jsFunction
• a4j:log
• a4j:outputPanel
• a4j:poll
• a4j:param
• a4j:queue
• a4j:attachQueue
• a4j:repeat
• a4j:region

Iteration:

• rich:dataTable
• rich:extendedDataTable
• rich:subTable
• rich:dataScroller
• rich:subTableToggleControl
• rich:columnGroup
• rich:column

Miscellaneous:

• rich:clientId
• rich:element
• rich:component
• rich:isUserInRole
• rich:findComponent
• rich:componentControl
• rich:hashParam

RichFaces Showcase Alpha2

We've also updated our showcase example to highlight the new components, and some of the new options. The readme.txt file in the <richfaces-4.0.0.Alpha2.zip>/examples/richfaces-showcase directory explains how to build and run the example. Hint maven clean package then deploy to your container :-)

All of the source is there for you to import into your favorite IDE, and explore. If you are using JBoss Tools it is easier than ever with the included m2eclipse plugin.

Component Development Kit

The 4.0 Component Development Kit (CDK) is also nearly complete! We use this to help us make our components, and you can create your own with it as well. We've created an initial CDK distribution, and have some initial archetype to kick start your component project. Keep an eye out for more details on using the CDK in our wiki, and blogs.

What's To Come

As I said above the project is entering a new phase, and we will have regular monthly milestone releases of 4.0, leading up to the final 4.0 release. This will allow everyone to see the progress being made, integrate components into your applications, etc…. More importantly I hope that we will see feedback, bugs, and contributions from those who can try it out. You can checkout the 4.0.0.Milestone1 jira for the latest of planned items.

How To Get Involved

As I've said before RichFaces is an open community project, and we always welcome people to get involved anyway they can!

With the 4.0.0.Alpha2 release we have made significant updates to the RichFaces build structure, and design of our project: RichFaces 4.0 Build Structure. This is going to make development of RichFaces easier for new people and let users work on new components in various sandbox areas. We'll be posting new wiki pages, and blogs outlining that in more details soon!

We also continue to have our weekly meeting via IRC which anyone can attend and participate, please see the Project Calendar and the Meeting Information page for more details, agendas, and minutes.

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The RichFaces team is very happy to announce the 3.3.3 Final release!! The 3.3.3 release is an important milestone for RichFaces. Not only does this release build on the stability you expect from RichFaces, but it also brings basic JSF 2.0 support to the 3.3.X branch.

In this release we have resolved several critical issues, and stabilized the JSF 2.0 support. The details can be found:

• RichFaces 3.3.3 and JSF 2.0 Wiki
• JSF 2.0 Roadmap for RichFaces Blog
• Release Notes for 3.3.3

You can download the latest stable artifacts from the download page or if you are using maven, you can update your dependencies following the RichFaces Maven wiki page.

As always, thanks to the development, QE, and doc teams. I wanted to say a special thanks to Andrei Markhel for tackling the majority of the issues in the 3.3.3 release, and our QE guys in Brno, Czech Republic ( Lukas and Pavol ) who did a great job testing this release. I am proud of everyone involved in this release.

JSF 2.0 Support

The RichFaces 3.3.3 and JSF 2.0 and JSF 2.0 Roadmap for RichFaces articles detail the integration requirements and plans for RichFaces and JSF 2.0. Instead of going over everything said there again I'll just take a couple of small quotes from the roadmap regarding the 3.3.3 release and JSF 2.0:

The goal of JSF 2.0 support in the 3.3.3 release is to run your existing RichFaces 3.3.X applications in a JSF 2.0/EE6 environment with little or no changes. This is an important migration step for any large application, or infrastructure.

We have always meant the 3.3.3 release to be a stepping stone for JSF 2 support. We needed to make a trade off between retro-fitting 3.3.X completely for JSF 2.0 ( a major undertaking ), or have limited JSF 2.0 support in 3.3.X and push forward with RichFaces 4.0 where we can really get the most out of JSF 2.0. This is one of the reasons that we are working so hard to get RichFaces 4.0 out.

Onward to RichFaces 4.0

This is the latest and last release of the 3.3.X branch, from here on out the whole team will be focused on pushing RichFaces 4.0 releases out. This is really going to be an exciting and busy time for the project. Keep an eye on this space for more in the near future!!

I would like to encourage anyone interested in Richfaces 4.0 and JSF 2.0 to look at the work already done, take part in our team meetings, and see where you can contribute. Once 4.0.0.Alpha2 release is out I'll be posting some blogs and how to articles on getting involved!

As one of the original JBoss leaders says - Onward…

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Now that RichFaces 3.3.3 is nearing its final release I wanted to take some time and discuss our plans for RichFaces and JSF 2.0 support in more detail.

RichFaces 3.3.3+

The goal of JSF 2.0 support in the 3.3.3 release is to run your existing RichFaces 3.3.X applications in a JSF 2.0/EE6 environment with little or no changes. This is an important migration step for any large application, and infrastructure.

We have always meant the 3.3.3 release to be a stepping stone for JSF 2 support. We needed to make a trade off between retro-fitting 3.3.X completely for JSF 2.0 ( a major undertaking ), or have limited JSF 2.0 support in 3.3.X and push forward with RichFaces 4.0 where we can really get the most out of JSF 2.0. This is one of the reasons that we are working so hard to get RichFaces 4.0 out.

In addition to the information in our release announcements ( 3.3.3.BETA1 and 3.3.3.CR1 ) and our wiki page Richfaces 3.3.3 and JSF 2.0, a few people have also posted blogs and articles that I think explain the plans for RichFaces support of JSF 2.0 well. DZone posted RichFaces 3.3.3 Begins Support for JSF 2.0 and Max Katz has posted RichFaces 3.3.3 RC1 and JSF 2.

RichFaces 4.0.0

RichFaces 4.0 is where we can really innovate and extend features to get the most out of JSF 2.0. RichFaces did this for JSF 1.2 and we plan to push the specification to the limits, and prototype the future of JSF!

This is going to include:

• New Custom behaviors
• Dynamic resource extensions
• Simplified component development kit (CDK)
• Customizable request queues
• Updated skinning
• Consolidated component set ( with all functionality you expect )
• Performance tuning and review
• Semantic HTML markup changes to make styling easier
• Interoperability with other component libraries
• Module build system for easy contributions

Plus, all the flexibility and stability needed for large scale development. This does mean that taking advantage of some JSF 2.0 features with RichFaces will need to wait for 4.0. The good news is that we are well on our way to our next 4.0 release, and we will have several time-boxed milestone releases to jump start your development.

We are also going to have detailed migration instructions, scripts, examples and a migration bridge to assist users in moving their existing applications to RichFaces 4.0. The details of this are not completely worked out yet, but our goal is make it as easy as possible for users of 3.3.X to migration to 4.0.

I would like to encourage anyone with an opinion or an idea to contribute to the process. Take a look at our releases, post to our forums, check out our meetings and get involved!

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