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<chapter id="Introduction" xreflabel="Introduction">
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  <chapterinfo>
    <keywordset>
      <keyword>RichFaces</keyword>

      <keyword>JSF</keyword>

      <keyword>skins</keyword>

      <keyword>Developer Guide</keyword>
    </keywordset>
  </chapterinfo>

  <title>Introduction</title>

<para>RichFaces is an open source framework that adds Ajax capability into existing JSF applications without resorting to JavaScript. </para>

<para>RichFaces leverages JavaServer Faces framework including lifecycle, validation, conversion facilities and management of static and dynamic resources. RichFaces components with built-in Ajax support and a highly customizable look-and-feel can be easily incorporated into JSF applications. </para>

<para>RichFaces allows to:</para>

 <itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Intensify the whole set of JSF benefits while working with Ajax. RichFaces is fully integrated into the JSF lifecycle. While other frameworks only give you access to the managed bean facility, RichFaces advantages the action and value change listeners, as well as invokes server-side validators and converters during the Ajax request-response cycle. </para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Add Ajax capability to the existing JSF applications.  Framework provides two components libraries (Core Ajax and UI). The Core library sets Ajax functionality into existing pages, so there is no need to write any JavaScript code or to replace existing components with new Ajax ones. RichFaces enables page-wide Ajax support instead of the traditional component-wide support and it gives the opportunity to define the event on the page. An event invokes an Ajax request and areas of the page which become synchronized with the JSF Component Tree after changing the data on the server by Ajax request in accordance with events fired on the client. </para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Create quickly complex View basing on out of the box components. RichFaces UI library contains components for adding rich user interface features to JSF applications. It extends the RichFaces framework to include a large (and growing) set of powerful rich Ajax-enabled components that come with extensive skins support. In addition, RichFaces components are designed to be used seamlessly with other 3d-party component libraries on the same page, so you have more options for developing your applications.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Write your own custom rich components with built-in Ajax support. We're always working on improvement of Component Development Kit (CDK) that was used for RichFaces UI library creation. The CDK includes a code-generation facility and a templating facility using a JSP-like syntax. These capabilities help to avoid a routine process of a component creation. The component factory works like a well-oiled machine allowing the creation of first-class rich components with built-in Ajax functionality even more easily than the creation of simpler components by means of the traditional coding approach. </para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Package resources with application Java classes. In addition to its core, Ajax functionality of RichFaces provides an advanced support for the different resources management: pictures, JavaScript code, and CSS stylesheets. The resource framework makes possible to pack easily these resources into Jar files along with the code of your custom components.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Easily generate binary resources on-the-fly. Resource framework can generate images, sounds, Excel spreadsheets etc.. on-the-fly so that it becomes for example possible to create images using the familiar approach of the "Java Graphics2D" library.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Create a modern rich user interface look-and-feel with skins-based technology. RichFaces provides a skinnability feature that allows easily define and manage different color schemes and other parameters of the UI with the help of named skin parameters. Hence, it is possible to access the skin parameters from JSP code and the Java code (e.g. to adjust generated on-the-fly images based on the text parts of the UI). RichFaces comes with a number of predefined skins to get you started, but you can also easily create your own custom skins. </para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Test and create the components, actions, listeners, and pages at the same time. An automated testing facility is in our roadmap for the near future. This facility will generate test cases for your component as soon as you develop it. The testing framework will not just test the components, but also any other server-side or client-side functionality including JavaScript code. What is more, it will do all of this without deploying the test application into the Servlet container. </para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>

<para>RichFaces UI components come ready to use out-of-the-box, so developers save their time and immediately gain the advantage of the mentioned above features in Web applications creation. As a result, usage experience can be faster and easily obtained.</para>
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