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<chapter id="introduction" xreflabel="introduction">
    <?dbhtml filename="introduction.html"?>

    <title>Introduction</title>
    <para>
          The <emphasis>RichFaces Real World Application</emphasis> — the working name is &quot;<emphasis role="bold">Photo Album</emphasis>&quot; — is created to imaginate the way 
          the web applications designed and developed with <property>RichFaces</property> could look and behave. 
    </para>
    <para>
          The RichFaces are evolved from <emphasis>Ajax4JSF</emphasis> framework (merge of Ajax and JavaServer Faces technologies) and 
          represent a framework and library of <emphasis>Ajax-capable UI components for JSF framework</emphasis>.  
          Amongst the wide range of similar libraries the RichFaces has set of benefits that is fully described in 
          the <ulink url="http://www.jboss.org/file-access/default/members/jbossrichfaces/freezone/docs/devguide/en/html/Introduction.html">Introduction to the RichFaces</ulink>.
          The &quot;Photo Album&quot; covers some of the most important of them and demonstrates: 
    </para>
      
          <itemizedlist>
                <listitem><para><emphasis>wide variety of UI components</emphasis>, which provides Lego-like way of building user interfaces for web applications;</para></listitem>
                <listitem><para><emphasis>built-in Ajax capability</emphasis>, which offers both component-wide and a lot more flexible page-wide Ajax support;</para></listitem>
                <listitem><para><emphasis>highly customizable look-and-feel</emphasis> (the RichFaces have special feature called 
                      &quot;<ulink url="http://www.jboss.org/file-access/default/members/jbossrichfaces/freezone/docs/devguide/en/html/ArchitectureOverview.html#Skinnability">Skinnability</ulink>&quot;).</para></listitem>
          </itemizedlist>
</chapter>

     
