Chapter 3 discusses the first component framework that can be used on top of a JSF reference implementation, like Sun RI or Apache MyFaces.

Apache MyFaces Tomahawk Components

After reading this chapter you will recognize how powerful the JSF components concept really is. Ian presents some pretty cool extensions to the standard JSF tags.

Tomahawk is one of the oldest implementation. So, you will find – without doubt – some interesting stuff in it. Although it uses JavaScript, like the JSCookMenu, you will miss native AJAX support. That’s one of the key difference to the other frameworks we will review in the following chapters.

Nevertheless, this allows us to use Tomahawk tags in ICEfaces projects. Because of this chapter 3 was very interesting to me. When I did my first JSF frameworks review some years ago I only had a look at the reusability of their dataTable components. If you miss something cool in ICEfaces, especially if you only use the community edition, like an Outlook-like calendar presentation in the browser, you are able to integrate this.

Although this sounds like “we can mix JSF component frameworks” reality tells us something different. There are limitations. ICEsoft has done some work on ICEfaces-specific adaptation for Tomahawk, but this was not continued. So, you have to use older Tomahawk releases. Internal class reference changes do not allow to mix current Tomahawk releases with current ICEfaces releases.

Not all Tomahawk tags will work. But, ICEfaces delivers alternatives in these cases – that are as good or even better.

Skinning is a bit tricky. You have no direkt support of the ICEfaces skinning functionality. This is maybe true for the transparent auto-updates via the AJAX-bride. So, in the most cases it is a good idea to have a look at ICEfaces EE to get a better integration – and maybe an even cooler presentation .

The next chapter will show the first components framework with native AJAX support: Apache Trinidad.

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